“Why was I so blind not to have perceived the necessity for wearing them all the time?”

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Today, every doctor understands the value of protective gear. The importance of rubber gloves is being felt even more intensely in their absence.

Though the CDC confirmed the first American Ebola case yesterday, the epidemic has been raging in West Africa for months. There, the disease has already claimed 3,000 lives, and more than 6,500 people have been infected. The number of cases is almost doubling every three weeks, a CDC spokesperson told reporters on a recent call.

Map of Ebola Outbreaks by Fatality Percentage

This outbreak has killed about 200 healthcare workers, as well, in part because of a lack of basic supplies and infrastructure, like hospital beds, bleach, and yes, gloves.

Ebola doesn't spread easily through the air, but it is highly transmissible through bodily fluids. The bodies of Ebola victims in particular can be like viral bombs, infecting almost everyone who comes into contact.

A recent study found that prior to the outbreak, only 63 percent of Liberia's hospitals had sterile gloves for doctors and nurses, and only 70 percent of Sierra Leone's did. In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that healthcare workers in Liberia were treating Ebola patients with bare hands because they lacked gloves. A doctor named Samuel Brisbane died there last summer, most likely after contracting the disease while administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to an Ebola patient without protection. Just yesterday, the New York Times' Adam Nossiter described a Sierra Leone hospital where "nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold."

Tony Morain, a spokesperson for Direct Relief International, told me that last week the group received a call from a hospital in Liberia. A doctor there said he had to stand and watch as a 2-year-old patient died—not from Ebola, but from an unrelated infection—because the hospital didn’t have any more gloves. Before the outbreak, the doctor said, they would have treated her, but now they can't risk touching a patient who might be carrying the virus.

"There are many basic needs given the scope of the epidemic," says Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation, which last month committed $50 million to support relief efforts in the Ebola-stricken countries. Though some of the funds are going to developing vaccines and treatments, Desmond-Hellmann said many workers on the front lines still lack basic necessities. The needs "are not mysterious. It's just urgent and challenging to get all these logistics met."

Malaysia, the world's leading manufacturer of rubber gloves, sent 20 million pairs last month to the five affected countries. Direct Relief said that between Malaysia's gloves and the organization's own donation of 2.8 million pairs, there will be enough gloves to last for 130 to 260 more days. But that doesn't account for "correct glove sizes, breakage, distribution considerations, or exponential growth of the disease. Nor does it include burial teams, disinfection teams, ambulance transport teams, and investigation teams. It also doesn’t consider the preexisting need."