Ebola’s other unsung heroes: the planners who keep the response running
Paul Molinaro is not looking forward to Christmas. He’s no Scrooge. But when you’re trying to keep an Ebola outbreak response up and running, the season of celebration and good cheer is a major inconvenience.
Rather than anticipating family gatherings, festive feasts, and brightly wrapped gifts, Molinaro, chief of operation support logistics for the World Health Organization’s emergencies program, dreads the likelihood of shops being closed, customs operations being understaffed, and pretty much everything he and his staff need to get done being that much more taxing over the Yuletide.
“Suppliers will tend to start shutting down for the holiday season. It becomes harder to get the windows of delivery because you may anticipate Kinshasa airport being a lot slower. It just becomes a pain for me,” said Molinaro, who is overseeing a team of several dozen logistical workers on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
When we think of Ebola outbreak responses, chances are
