Kleber Silva takes his temperature twice a day, enters the results in his BlackBerry and sends them to the company he works for, ArcelorMittal.
Silva, the head of iron ore for the world’s biggest steelmaker, is home from Liberia for three weeks. When he returns to the African nation next month, he’ll still be in the 21-day incubation period for the Ebola virus. The temperature checks won’t end, and neither will his need for vigilance.
Silva’s experience is typical for those working to keep businesses going, even as a health crisis explodes around them. His job is to keep safe almost 5,000 ArcelorMittal employees working in Liberia, along with their families. The effort, which will cost $3 million by year’s end, is important both on a human scale, and financially: The company relies on the iron-rich Nimba mountains to feed its blast furnaces, and Liberia depends on mining to generate a fifth of its economy.
“We want to keep this mine alive,” Silva said in an interview at ArcelorMittal (MT)’s London offices. “For the country, for the people, for the company. We need to deal with the crisis, deal with the outbreak, but have the vision beyond this. This will not stay forever.”
The outbreak has infected more than 10,000 people in West Africa, killing almost half. It threatens to erase the progress Liberia has made since it emerged from civil war more than a decade ago with Finance Minister Amara Konneh forecasting zero growth this year because of the disease.
Medical Staff
So far, Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal has spent more than $1.5 million fighting the disease. While that figure will probably increase to $3 million by the end of the year, it is human effort, rather than money, that is the big drain on the company’s resources, according to Silva.
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