A Makah tribal member has been deployed to West Africa, where he is working with a medical team to help victims of the Ebola virus, which has killed thousands of people in several countries.
Cmdr. Martin Smith, 45, a member of the U.S. Public Health Service, who on Oct. 27 deployed to Monrovia, Liberia, to support Health Service medical teams treating Ebola victims, is expected to work there until late this month, probably after Christmas, or later, said his wife, Sherri Smith, a Port Angeles native.
The Smith family, including the couple’s children — Derek, 19, and Haley, 16 — are stationed in Tuscon, Ariz., where he has been an environmental health director and working with the nearby Tohono O’odham tribe and other tribes in the Southwest.
The current deployment is different from those he has undergone in the past, his wife said.
“It’s Ebola. It is unknown and kind of scary,” she said.
Sherri said she is comforted by the fact that her husband is not in direct contact with patients.
The World Health Organization reported that as of Sunday there have been 5,674 deaths out of 15,901 cases of Ebola in the heavily-impacted West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
In Liberia, between 10 and 20 new laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported each day in November.
There have been 3,016 Ebola-related deaths in Liberia, of 7,168 known cases.
Smith is a 1987 Neah Bay High School graduate and Makah tribal member, and the son of Russell and Mae Smith of Neah Bay.
He attended Peninsula College and graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s in environmental health science.
He joined the Public Health Service in 1998 to work in the Indian Health Service division as a logistics specialist.
The Public Health Service is a uniformed service whose members wear U.S. Navy uniforms with Health Service insignia, and hold ranks equivalent to Navy officers.
Like the armed services, members of the Public Health Service are often transferred to different units around the U.S. and are sometimes deployed to difficult situations around the world.
Unlike the military, Health Service officers can decline deployments, so to form the 65-member team to sent to Liberia, the Health Service had to ask members to deploy.
Martin Smith got the call to be a member of the very first U.S. team to deploy for the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
“My husband is always the first to volunteer,” Sherri Smith said.
In the past, he had been sent to the Pacific Islands to care for islanders who might have been exposed to radiation from early U.S. bomb testing in the South Pacific.
He also was deployed to Texas for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and to New York City for Hurricane Sandy.
He was part of Pacific Partnership 2009, a five-country, three-month humanitarian trip aboard the USNS Richard E. Byrd.
Of the 65 members who were asked to deploy to West Africa, not a single one declined, Sherri said.
The team reported to the Federal Emergency Management Agency center for domestic preparedness in Anniston, Ala., on Oct. 19 for training in Ebola management and care before they left for Liberia.
In Liberia, Martin Smith works in the headquarters set up for the team as a logistics officer, tracking supplies and organizing transportation for the medical team.
The headquarters camp is set up several miles from the hospital where the medical team treats doctors and nurses who become infected with Ebola while treating their own patients, Sherri said.
The U.S. government promised top quality, modern medical care to health care workers who volunteer to treat patients in the outbreak, she said.
The World Health Organization has reported that 570 doctors and nurses have been infected while treating Ebola patients in West Africa, and 324 have died.
While the team is expected to be relieved by a second team in late December, there is no definite date of return, Sherrie Smith said.
The team may be subject to quarantine before he returns home, she said.
There is a lot of fear of Ebola among the public, Sherrie Smith said.
“We have a neighbor who called the police because a priest came home from a mission in Africa. He was in South Africa, nowhere near the Ebola outbreak,” Smith said.
While most people in the Tuscon community are supportive, the couple’s 16-year-old high school daughter has seen the fear of Ebola at school.
One person thought that her father would infect the girl, then the girl would bring the disease to the school.
The family has had little contact with Martin since he arrived in Africa.
“There is spotty contact at best,” Sherri said.
Unlike a military base, the family is not surrounded by other families who are or have been going through similar deployments, she said.
She said that his co-workers have kept in contact and have been helping the family whenever they can.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
