Duct tape is critical because Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids and blood.
Globe-trotting non-profit
Project C.U.R.E. teams travel the globe, having established partnerships in more than 130 countries. A year and a half ago, Jackson visited Sierra Leone, before the outbreak.
“All the doctors and nurses that I was working with are dead because they came in contact with blood and sweat and stuff from people who were sick, and they caught the disease and they died,” says Jackson. “All the stuff that we’re sending them now is the stuff designed to create a protective layer between that health care worker and the people who are sick.”
Many items have exceeded a federally mandated expiration date, but communications director Jan Mazotti says there’s nothing wrong with them. “Band-Aids don’t go bad. Gloves don’t go bad. Tubing doesn’t go bad,” says Mazotti.
Inspired in Brazil
The idea to give these leftover supplies a new life was the brainchild of Douglas Jackson’s father Jim. He was a real estate developer who helped develop Winter Park ski resort and later went to work as an economic consultant. Douglas still remembers his dad’s reaction, on a trip to Brazil, when he visited a free health clinic in a slum.
"He went in and there was nothing in it," says Jackson. "And it just tore his heart out.”
