With the goal of reducing the risk of infection among frontline health workers, an Emergency Ebola Design Challenge event will be held this weekend, Oct. 24 to 26, on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood Campus.

Participants from the university will be asked to help improve the design of personal protection gear that health workers wear and use while treating patients who are infected with the Ebola virus. The disease, which has a fatality rate of over 50 percent, can be transmitted from person-to-person by close contact with patients, dead bodies or infected body fluids.

The event has been organized by Jhpiego, an international, nonprofit health group that is affiliated with the university; and the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, CBID. This center is based in the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, which is shared by the School of Medicine and the Whiting School of Engineering.

The purpose of this weekend’s event is to develop new protective gear and improve procedures that can reduce the likelihood that health workers are exposed to the virus.

The design challenge is open only to Johns Hopkins students, fellows, faculty members, clinicians, administrators and staff members.

Excerpted from The Hub. Read more here.