In his first two weeks in Liberia at a new clinic run by the charity International Medical Corps, Dr. Hatch has learned the ways of the Ebola ward.

Much of West Africa is following a no-hands rule to avoid contagion from the deadly virus, but doctors and nurses here, protected by layers of plastic and rubber armor, routinely touch the sick. Without a drug that can cure the disease, they offer patients fluids and medications to treat symptoms, but also the simplest of comforts, like feeding them or cleaning them up. They follow their instincts — Dr. Hatch turned out to be right that an elderly man suffered from a chronic illness, not Ebola, as a delayed blood test result finally proved — but try to restrain their impulses, because old habits might not be safe.

Dr. Hatch’s journey to this remote center in a tropical forest began last month at a training course run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a former Army base in Anniston, Ala. An infectious disease specialist in Worcester, Mass., Dr. Hatch, 45, joined about two dozen other medical workers heading to West Africa.

Outside a battered warehouse at the base, with peeling walls that served as a mock Ebola treatment unit, mannequins were sprawled on the ground. Dr. Hatch and Bridget Anne Mulrooney, an American nurse who was volunteering with the same charity, spent nearly 20 minutes putting on gear: two to three pairs of gloves, aprons, head coverings, goggles, masks and chemical protection suits that were hot and crinkled when they walked. Dr. Hatch had trouble tying a knot with the double gloves. “I was never good at surgery,” he confessed.