Fatu Kekula

Fatu Kekula is a Liberian woman who was a nursing student during the Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia. Four of her family members became ill and could not access medical care in a hospital. She improvised a "trash bag method" that would allow her to care for her family members without becoming ill herself. Three of her family members survived the epidemic, and Kekula herself did not contract the virus. The trash bag method has been recognized as a relatively simple and accessible way for people to protect themselves in an epidemic if they cannot get treatment in a hospital.

Ebola outbreak On 27 July 2014, Fatu Kekula's father, Moses, became ill and was taken to a local hospital in Kakata, Liberia. Unknown to the family, the hospital bed he was given had just been used by someone who died of Ebola. After hospital staff began contracting the disease, the hospital shut down; Kekula attempted to take her father to a hospital in Monrovia, but they were all at capacity. Kekula took him home, where three other family members became ill: Kekula's mother, Victoria, her sister, Vivian, and her cousin, Alfred Winnie.

Kekula quarantined her sick family members in a makeshift isolation room—an unfinished room outside the house. After each bout of caring for her sick family members, she would carefully remove her gear and spray herself with chlorinated water. She would then burn the contaminated equipment. Her weeks of caring for her sick family led her to use four boxes of surgical gloves, as well as several bags of raincoats. She was particularly interested in learning more about caring for burn injuries, as Liberian children sometimes fall into the open fires used for cooking.

Impact Workers from international aid organizations learned about Kekula's "trash bag method" and began teaching it to other people in West Africa who did not have the means or ability to make it to a hospital.