--- title: Ebola: Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough description: It takes more than good gear to stop health care workers from catching Ebola. It requires training, buddies and copious amounts of chlorine canonical: https://time.com/3509980/ebola-protection-mistakes/ author: Aryn Baker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-15T18:22:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:28.519Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola: Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough og:description: It takes more than good gear to stop health care workers from catching Ebola. It requires training, buddies and copious amounts of chlorine og:url: https://time.com/3509980/ebola-protection-mistakes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2f51575e8a71e0af/698760f706f2c19a5c331659/ebola-liberia4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Health workers receive assistance with putting on their protective gear before entering the high-risk zone at the Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola: Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough twitter:description: It takes more than good gear to stop health care workers from catching Ebola. It requires training, buddies and copious amounts of chlorine twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2f51575e8a71e0af/698760f706f2c19a5c331659/ebola-liberia4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Protective Gear Is Sometimes Not Enough in the Fight Against Ebola > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b39d91ea-dbd3-4c5a-b79a-f95a32bc6271&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EJ3m56cA.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2014-10-02. Health officials in the US are using a method known as contact tracing, to see who is at risk from Ebola._ by [Aryn Baker](https://time.com/author/aryn-baker/) ## Aryn Baker Oct 15, 2014 6:22 PM UTC  Health workers receive assistance with putting on their protective gear before entering the high-risk zone at the Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit near Gbarnga in rural Bong County, Liberia, Oct. 5, 2014. Health workers receive assistance with putting on their protective gear before entering the high-risk zone at the Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit near Gbarnga in rural Bong County, Liberia, Oct. 5, 2014. Daniel Berehulak—The New York Times/Redux by [Aryn Baker](https://time.com/author/aryn-baker/) ## Aryn Baker Oct 15, 2014 6:22 PM UTC When it comes to Ebola, the full-body Personal Protective Equipment \[PPE\] suit is probably the best way to prevent infection. But a PPE can also be one of the easiest ways to get Ebola. A PPE is usually made up of a full-body, impermeable suit with a hood, rubber boots covered by Tyvek booties, multiple pairs of surgical gloves, a surgical mask over the nose and mouth, a plastic bib, goggles, a plastic apron and a lot of duct tape. There is a reason why they are nicknamed moon suits: worn properly, they shouldn’t show an inch of skin. Putting them on right requires two people and about 10 minutes. Taking them off, in even the best of circumstances, is a clumsy, arduous process with multiple opportunities to make a lethal mistake. It is not yet clear how, exactly, [two health care workers](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/us/ebola-outbreak-texas.html?emc=edit%5Fna%5F20141015&nlid=30019748) at a Dallas hospital tending Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, caught the disease, but health authorities are looking closely at the protective measures used at the hospital, and whether or not they were sufficient. Meanwhile, in Spain, where a nurse, Teresa Romero Ramos, is being treated for Ebola that she caught from a patient recently returned from Sierra Leone, officials are questioning whether or not she wore her PPE properly. On a Spanish television program [quoted](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/world/europe/spanish-nurse-ebola-health-budget-cuts.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&%5Fr=0) by the New York _Times_, Madrid’s regional health minister, Javier Rodríguez, questioned the need for extensive training on using the PPEs. “You don’t need a master’s degree to explain to someone how you should put on or take off” a protective suit, he said. Maybe not, but no matter how experienced and qualified you are in putting on and taking off a PPE there is always room for error. I recently spent two weeks in Monrovia, Liberia, reporting on Ebola, and climbing into, and out of, PPEs on a regular basis, and I am still not sure I ever got it right. I was trained by the best, too: the [Red Cross Dead Body Management teams](http://time.com/3429927/ebola-liberia-body-collectors/), the guys responsible for picking up deceased Ebola victims and transporting them to the crematorium for safe disposal. An Ebola patient is at his most infective in the hours and days after death, when the virus swarms the skin and bodily fluids. When the Dead Body Management team workers finish zipping a corpse into a double-sealed body bag they undergo an extensive decontamination process that best resembles a military drill in its precision and attention to detail. Each worker is paired with a sanitizer, a man wearing a backpack sprayer filled with a chlorine and water solution. The process is initiated with a good dousing of chlorine solution and a vigorous washing of the gloved hands. The worker removes his goggles, which are sprayed thoroughly and then discarded. His hands are sprayed again. Then the hood goes down, and the zipper is sprayed, as are the hands for another time. He unzips, and his hands are sprayed yet again. Then he has to shrug out of the suit without allowing any of the external surfaces to come into contact with his hands or the clothing underneath. And so it goes, layer after layer until the worker is left standing in boots, medical scrubs, and the last pair of gloves. Again he is liberally sprayed down with the chlorine solution, at which point he has to jigger off his gloves in a way that ensures that the surface does not come into contact with the skin. Each organization, be it the Red Cross or Médecins Sans Frontières \[MSF\], has a similar ritual, even if small details vary. Still, mistakes are made. Even MSF, which has spearheaded the Ebola response in west Africa since day one, and probably knows more than any other organization about how to prevent infection, has seen two international health workers sickened with the disease. A United Nations medical worker infected in Liberia and transported to Germany for care [died](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/10/un-medical-worker-dies-ebola-germany-201410148303244608.html) on Oct. 13\. A doctor working for an Italian medical charity contracted Ebola last month, and is still receiving treatment in Germany. The gear works, but the possibility of human error is still high, especially when working in a high-stress environment, when fatigue and fear stalk every move. PPEs can also provide a dangerously false sense of security. When they are not put on right, or if they are taken off incorrectly, they may as well not be there at all. If you are lucky the droplet of sweat dropping into your eye as you remove your goggles without bending over first didn’t pass over some Ebola-contaminated material on your hood. I met one health care worker who thinks he caught Ebola when a young patient vomited on him, and the vomit passed through a chink in his Tyvek armor, where his suit didn’t entirely zip up over his mask. Both he and the patient survived. Which is why having the right kind of protection is only the beginning. There needs to be training, and it has to be drilled in daily. There needs to be a buddy system, in which one health care worker is always watching the other, to ensure that the protective gear is on correctly, and that it is taken off correctly. But there will always be mistakes. Ebola will get through. The important thing is to be ready when it does. ## Transcript Now that the first case of Ebola has been diagnosed on American soil, what's next? How can we keep the virus from spreading? Health officials are now turning to a process known as contact tracing to figure out who else might have been exposed to the virus. The likeliest candidates are the medical technicians who treated him. That's because Ebola is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids, which health workers could have come in contact with while treating the patient. Beyond that are the patient's family members or people who have been living in close quarters with him since he developed the symptoms, including fever. Vomiting or diarrhea. These people will be monitored for 21 days, which is the incubation period of Ebola, to see if they develop similar symptoms. They won't be quarantined, but they might be asked to avoid traveling out of the country and spending time in crowded public areas. If anyone in either of these rings appears infected. Health officials will extend their monitoring to include anyone those people have been in contact with. Including their family members, school classmates, or work colleagues, until no more Ebola symptoms are discovered. Beyond that, if people in this ring appear infected, they too would be monitored for symptoms for 21 days, and the analysis would spread to their contacts. The passengers on the patient's flights from Liberia to the US aren't considered at high risk of exposure, since he was not experiencing symptoms then. Of course, all of this depends on honest and accurate information from the patient and his contacts about where they have been and with whom. Something that has been an issue in West Africa. There the stigma against Ebola has led patients to flee health volunteers who are attempting to trace contacts or fail to report people they have interacted with. 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