Photo by Mic Smith
Dr. Jeffery Deal
AGE: 60
LIVES IN: Charleston
WORK: Physician, anthropologist, researcher, global health speaker
CLAIM TO FAME: Inventor of the TRU-D portable, automated disinfection robot
CURRENT JOB: Director of health studies and travel medicine, Water Missions International
IN HIS SPARE TIME: Authored four novels and an anthropology book about South Sudan
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In the center of a hospital room, looking like R2D2’s taller, slimmer cousin, the robot radiates a bluish light.
In just minutes, it delivers its deadly blow. Waves of ultraviolet C radiation attack the DNA of bacteria lurking on bedrails, nightstands and doorknobs, sterilizing every hard surface.
“This thing kills everything,” Dr. Jeffery Deal says of the TRU‑D (total room ultraviolet disinfector), an automated disinfection system on wheels. “Nothing survives this wavelength, if you put adequate doses there. Nothing.”
A self-described poor country boy from Toccoa, Ga., Deal was educated in South Carolina and practiced otolaryngology in Charleston until the loss of vision in one eye forced him to give up surgeries. He turned his attention to medical missions in war-ravaged South Sudan, earning a master’s in anthropology and board certification in tropical medicine to better equip himself for that work.
He invented TRU-D to battle germs and drug-resistant superbugs that can plague hospitals. The robots are being used in operating rooms, intensive-care units and burn wards across the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Last summer, in the midst of a frightening global health crisis, the question arose: Could TRU‑D kill Ebola?
It can. At its lowest setting, TRU‑D delivers a dosage of UVC light 1,000 times more powerful than what is needed to kill Ebola. In August, the Memphis company that distributes the devices, TRU‑D SmartUVC Room Disinfection, donated two robots to Ebola treatment units in Liberia. Deal spent two weeks in Monrovia, training staff there to use TRU-D and treating patients.
“We weren’t thinking about Ebola when we built this thing,” says Deal, who developed TRU‑D with his brother, David, a physicist and industrial hygienist, and Phil Ufkes, a Hanahan engineer.
“It’s God’s providence,” Deal says. “It’s almost like it was designed for this moment in time.”
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Get More
Read posts from Deal’s blog during his 2014 travels in Liberia.
Watch the TRU-D in action.
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Related story
Safe water, saved lives — Dr. Jeffery Deal also works for Water Missions International, a Charleston-based charity bringing clean water and simple sanitation to poor nations around the world.