Fatu Kekula is a Liberian woman who was a nursing student during the Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia. Four of her family members became ill and could not access medical care in a hospital. She improvised a "trash bag method" that would allow her to care for her family members without becoming ill herself. Three of her family members survived the epidemic, and Kekula herself did not contract the virus. The trash bag method has been recognized as a relatively simple and accessible way for people to protect themselves in an epidemic if they cannot get treatment in a hospital. Ebola outbreak On 27 July 2014, Fatu Kekula's father, Moses, became ill and was taken to a local hospital in Kakata, Liberia. Unknown to the family, the hospital bed he was given had just been used by someone who died of Ebola. After hospital staff began contracting the disease, the hospital shut down; Kekula attempted to take her father to a hospital in Monrovia, but they were all at capacity. Kekula took him home, where three other family members became ill: Kekula's mother, Victoria, her sister, Vivian, and her cousin, Alfred Winnie. At the time, she was in her final year of study to become a nurse. Doctors would not come to her house due to the contagion risk, but one did advise Kekula over the phone. Some doctors told her to leave her family and not go "anywhere near them," however, she said that she could not have done this because "your family is your family." Kekula quarantined her sick family members in a makeshift isolation room—an unfinished room outside the house. She was able to start IV lines to administer drugs she purchased from a local clinic. She also treated them with oral rehydration therapy. Kekula did not have access to standard personal protective equipment from the highly-contagious disease, so to care for her sick family members, she improvised a new method. Her method has been called the "trash bag method." It involved placing trash bags over her socks and tying them off at the calf. She would then put on rubber boots, over which she added another layer of trash bags. She also wrapped her hair in a trash bag. She also wore a raincoat, a surgical mask, and four gloves on each hand. After each bout of caring for her sick family members, she would carefully