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MIDVALE — A Utah tech company is doing its part to fight the spread of Ebola in Africa as two of its devices work at mapping the infected areas of Liberia.
Michael Olsen, chairman of the Midvale company Addressing Homes, said just last Wednesday he received an email from the head of the Ebola task force for Liberia.
"They were getting ready to close the hospitals because the Ebola was spreading so fast. They were then going to direct people to the health clinics, but they didn't have any maps of where the health clinics were located." Olsen said. "The email requested for us to send over our handheld computer devices that we could map on the ground. They wanted all of the health clinics mapped."
But that wasn't the end. Olsen said within a few hours he had another request from the Liberian task force, asking that his company map the neighborhoods and communities where the virus was spreading and look for a pattern.
Then, a third request came at the end of the day, asking Olsen to find and map all of the dead bodies abandoned on the side of the road.
It may sound like a gruesome request, but Olsen said many people in the poverty stricken areas refuse to report their sick family members. Worried that health officials will take their family away, locals choose to hide infected members until their death. Then the family is forced to dump the decaying bodies on the street. It is a health hazard, but Olsen said the bodies are a flag — signaling areas where the disease is spreading — but people are too scared to seek medical help.
Olsen said if they map the locations where the bodies are being dumped, (health officials) could go into those communities and put together an educational program to show the people where the clinics are and tell them they need to get help and warn them that they may already be infected. "This is one of the reasons they think that the Ebola is spreading so quickly."
He said his company sent the devices immediately. They arrived in Liberia Monday and they started mapping on Wednesday. He said his company will work with government officials and the World Health Organization to try and determine how the disease is spreading and where the contagion is at its worst.
"We started to realize the impact (we) could have." Olsen said.
This isn't Olsen's first time working with Liberia. He said in 2007 the country asked him if he could use his land mapping technology to remap the country after its land records were destroyed in the civil war.
"By destroying all the land records, it took all the private land ownership away."
He was back in the country again in 2010 to meet with the Liberia's president. This time he was hired to start an addressing system for Liberia, a form of organization that had never existed in the country before.
Nobody has clean water. Nobody has a sewer system. There's no garbage collection. There is no place to wash your hands. No wonder it (Ebola) is spreading so fast.
–Michael Olsen
In preparation for the order, Olsen said he explored the country and found himself in West Pointe, the country's biggest slum. He said the area is about a mile by a mile-and-a-half and is host to over 70,000 thousand people.
Walking through that slum area, you started to look at what a family called a home." Olsen said. "And walking past, you couldn't look at a housing unit, or dwelling unit, and tell where one unit stopped and another unit starts."
"Nobody has clean water. Nobody has a sewer system. There's no garbage collection. There is no place to wash your hands." Olsen added. "No wonder it (Ebola) is spreading so fast."
Olsen said those houses inspired him to begin work on a new device, one that could map an area from roof tops and didn't rely on obvious land boundaries. Olsen said he finished making the new instrument last October and was presenting the software to Liberia for the first time last month. He said it is incredible to think about the timing of his new device.
"The thing that's interesting, though, is that you can go back to my original visits in 2007 and 2010 and, man, creating the algorithm and building the software and building the data portal — all of those things had to be in place for us to do what we are doing." Oslen said. "Having everything that we have made it possible to literally start mapping the minute the devices hit the ground."
He said the new gadgets are called "AimObservers" and are basically three-inch gray screens that transmit information directly back to the Addressing Homes in Midvale, Utah, where a software system maps the data.
"They could take a picture of a clinic, or whatever, and they push a button and it calculates the longitude and the latitude of where that clinic is located. Then that data comes to us at night, just because of the time change, and then we map it the next day." Olsen said his company can then send it back to the Liberian government where officials can send it down the pyramid to the local authorities.
The devices have only been out for a day, but Olsen said he has big hopes for his invention.
"I am now looking at how fast we could mobilize to do the same thing for Sierra Leone and for Guinea and Nigeria. With the portals being built, the software being built, is that something we could turn around here in the next week or two?" Olsen said.
He said tackling Ebola in the rest of Africa is the next big step.
Brianna is a reporter and weekend anchor for KSL News Radio. Contact her at: bbodily@ksl.com
