West Australian mining companies with operations in West Africa are preparing their workforce as the threat of the Ebola virus escalates.
West Africa is battling the worst ever outbreak of Ebola, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting the death toll has exceeded 1,200, with deaths recorded in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Guinea.
WA-based Resolute Mining has three gold mines in Africa and Australia. Its Syama mine in Mali is a few hundred kilometres from the border with Guinea.
Chief executive officer Peter Sullivan said while mine operations are not yet affected, the company is educating surrounding communities about the threat of the virus spreading.
“It’s business as usual at the site, but obviously we are monitoring the situation,” he said.
“We’ve carried out precautionary activities at our site to ensure we are best prepared should the virus enter Mali.
“We are doing programs in communities that surround our mine site, so they are aware of the threat and how to reduce the potential of it affecting their community.
“We are also monitoring people coming and going from our site, particularly if they are travelling to Guinea.”
WA-based miner Tawana Resources, which is developing an iron ore project in Liberia, said it was halting all non-essential work in the region to protect its employees from infection.
In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, the company said all non-essential local staff, contractors and expatriate staff would be returning to their homes.
A state of emergency has been declared in Liberia, in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease within the country and across international borders.
Tawana executive chairman Wayne Richards said the company would continue to monitor the situation.
Rio Tinto minimises workforce risk
Mining majors Rio Tinto and Vale also have projects in West Africa.
A spokesman for Rio said the company had taken steps to minimise the risk to its operations in Guinea.
“This outbreak continues to be having a terrible impact on the people of Guinea and neighbouring countries,” he said.
“We have not stopped the movement of our people in, out or around Guinea, although we are ensuring that travel is only for essential purposes.
“To reduce the risk of transmission, we ask staff who have visited the highest risk areas to stay home for up to 21 days before returning to work.”
The miner said it had donated $100,000 to the WHO’s work in Guinea and is sending extra sanitation supplies and equipment to the communities its employees work and live in.
WA Health’s director of disaster management, Andy Robertson, believed there was little risk WA fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers travelling to West Africa would become infected by the Ebola virus.
“We are certainly aware that there are a number of fly-in, fly-out workers who work across West Africa,” he said.
“It is hard to gauge exact numbers, so we haven’t got any specific plans for FIFO people, but we are certainly monitoring, and the border security people are informing people coming back from Africa about the risks of exposure, but I think the risks are very low.
“While the risk to the FIFO remains low, having said that, if they have been exposed inadvertently by coming in contact with someone and they become unwell, we would be keen to be in contact with them and manage them as quickly and appropriately as we can.”
Dr Robertson said the health department has had a contingency plan in place in case the virus comes into the state.
He said while the fatality rate for this current strain is relatively low, overseas authorities are concerned about the failure to contain it
“What’s concerning about this outbreak is it has gone on longer and impacted on more people than previous outbreaks,” he said.
“Remembering there have been a number of Ebola outbreaks in the past 20-30 years, many of them concluded rapidly after people stepped in and implemented measures.
“This one unfortunately seems to have continued to progress.
“We are obviously taking it seriously, we are revising the plan, to make sure there aren’t any advances not covered by the plan, but we are fairly confident our plan is robust.”
Director of epidemiology and bio-statistics at Curtin University’s school of health, Dr Linda Selvey, agreed that the chance of a WA mine worker getting infected with the virus was low.
“To catch Ebola you have to have very close contact with a case, and I think it would be unlikely that people travelling to a mine would become infected,” she said.
“And that’s because it is not that easy to catch, not like the flu that is quite transmissible.
“Most of the cases are relatives or the virus gets passed on through burial practices or caring for them when they are sick either in hospital or at home. I think aid workers are the bigger risk.
“It is a big deal, a couple of thousand cases is a big deal, but even if there is a case that ends up here, it is still unlikely to have an impact on public health.”
Mining companies trial infectious disease toolkit
Meanwhile, a project field testing an infectious disease toolkit in Africa is underway by four mining companies – two of them from WA – with operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Ebola River is situated in the Congo, where the disease was first detected in 1976.
Australia-Africa Mining Industry Group (AAMIG) chairman Bill Turner said the project, in the Katanga Province, is being led by the Centre for Global Health Security at Chatham House in London, managed by International SOS and funded by United States government body USAID.
“What we are doing here is a project to address the response by the resource industry to emerging infectious diseases; it is not a reaction to what is happening in West Africa with Ebola, but it is certainly timely,” Mr Turner said.
“The type of diseases we are talking about here are things like SARS, Ebola, Marburg, Hendra virus, all those diseases that come from animal reservoirs.
“The concern here is as resource companies push further and further into relatively undisturbed animal habitats, the chance for diseases to jump from animals to humans increases. And that’s the issue.
“It’s an issue mining companies and exploration companies need to be aware of and put in risk mitigation measures in place for this sort of thing, develop management strategies.”
The two WA-based mining companies involved are Tiger Resources with their Kipoi project, Mawson West with its Dikulihsi project, along with Melbourne-based MMG and American miner Freeport.
Mr Turner said AAMIG is trying to better position mining companies from a medical health risk point of view.
“You get to a situation where you begin to realise you really can’t send people to a remote area in Africa, where there is the potential for these things to happen without giving them appropriate training in how to deal with these medical risk situations,” he said.
“The big thing it does is deliver on the duty of care responsibility that directors and officers have for their employees when they deploy them to Africa; it’s an area people haven’t put a lot of thought into.”
Mr Turner said a global health security expert will present at the Africa Down Under mining conference being held in Perth early next month.