Duty of care and health worker protections in the age of Ebola: lessons from Médecins Sans Frontières

### Summary box Protecting health workers from preventable illness, disability and death must become a fundamental first step in building resilient health systems capable of planning for and effectively responding to public health emergencies while maintaining core services.1 2 The health sector is already known as a ‘high-hazard’ employment zone, even when workers provide routine clinical care under circumstances clearly safer than an emergency response.3 Beyond the anticipated infectious agents such as tuberculosis and hepatitis that a worker might encounter, other hazard categories include chemical, physicaland psychological risks which threaten worker health and safety.4 The sector’s poor workforce illness and injury rates reflect these hazards, even in well-resourced settings. In the UK, for example, illness and injury rates are …