Decorah HS graduate spent three weeks in Africa, responding to the Ebola outbreak there

(Left to right): Anne Purfield and Michelle Dynes (Photo courtesy of NPR News)

Decorah HS graduate Michelle Dynes is an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.  She and a colleague, Anne Purfield, have just returned from spending three weeks responding to the Ebola epidemic in the Kenema district of Sierra Leone.

National Public Radio News (NPR) caught up with the two women and interviewed them on their return to Atlanta.

Dynes told NPR the toll on Sierra Leone's health care workers has been high: "By the time we had arrived "more than 20 nurses had died from Ebola. And nearly all of the phlebotomists had died...They've taken care of their own colleagues and watched them all die."

"It just hits you really hard, because you realize we're only here for five weeks, six weeks," Dynes says. "They're here for the long haul."

Dynes says it was difficult being told not to hug any of the patients because Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.

(The complete NPR News story can be read at: http://www.npr.org/2014/10/10/354888965/when-holding-an-orphaned-baby-can-mean-contracting-ebola