Controversial Ebola suits this year’s ‘most wanted’ Halloween costume

Emergency protection gear seems set to be all the rage for Halloween this year as the world struggles to get to grips with the Ebola crisis. Respirators, gas masks, rubber gloves and white or yellow cover-all hazmat suits have gone on sale across the U.S. But some have complained that with an American nurse, the first person to contract Ebola in the U.S., still battling the deadly disease - and another Dallas health worker testing positive - it might be too soon.

Normally I think that irony and humor is funny, but this thing with the costumes, is it really that funny? I mean, Ebola’s not even under control yet.

Philadelphia physician’s assistant Maria McKenna

Nina Pham caught the disease from Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who succumbed to the disease at a Dallas hospital on 8 October. Although there have been few cases of the disease outside West Africa - where more than 4,500 people have died - the World Health Organisation has warned there could be up to 10,000 new cases of Ebola a week within two months. Many of the hazmat suits are left over from last year when the success of the TV series Breaking Bad made them a popular costume.

I really don’t think people are thinking about that. I don’t think they’re thinking about the families and the victims.

Mikhael Gilmore, Texas resident

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