Britain is sending 750 military
personnel, a medical ship and three
helicopters to Sierra Leone to help fight the
spread of Ebola, officials said Wednesday.
The ship will be equipped with hospital-style
critical care units while the three Merlin
helicopters will carry doctors to areas where
they are needed.
The personnel will be deployed from next
week and will help to build treatment
centres, the defence ministry said.
It said 200 military personnel would be
deployed to run and staff a training facility
for medical workers and 250 would use the
helicopters to transport supplies and
doctors.
The remaining 300 were already planned to
assist Sierra Leone's government.
The announcement came after British Prime
Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting
of the Cobra emergency committee on the spread of Ebola.
The government meeting also decided to
step up precautions against Ebola in Britain
including through a planned "national
exercise and wider resilience training".
The government said in a statement that
posters would also be put up in British
airports to raise awareness.
In Washington, US Secretary of State John
Kerry also urged more countries to "step up"
in the fight against Ebola following talks
with Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip
Hammond.
The Ebola epidemic has killed nearly 3,500
people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Nigeria and Senegal this year.
Britain has only treated one case of Ebola
on its shores.
William Pooley, a nurse who contracted the
virus while working in Sierra Leone, made a
full recovery last month after being treated
in a London hospital.
But concerns have risen since a Spanish
nurse caught Ebola while treating a patient
in a Madrid hospital and the World Health
Organisation has warned that other isolated
infections in Europe were "unavoidable".
Health officials in the US announced
Wednesday that a Liberian man diagnosed
with Ebola in Texas, Thomas Eric Duncan,
had died.
Britain's trade union for doctors, the British
Medical Association, urged ministers to
make it easier for doctors from west Africa
working in Britain to return to the region
and treat Ebola victims.
Many are currently concerned that doing so
would put their ability to return to Britain at
risk due to visa issues, said BMA senior
director Vivienne Nathanson.
She also warned that Britain needed to have
a "higher level of suspicion" about the risk
from Ebola.
"We know there is a risk associated with the
numbers of people coming through London
because of our air links to west Africa so we
need to have a higher level of suspicion and
that means we need to inform the public,"
she told BBC radio.
"The one thing we have learnt from Texas is
that we need to have a higher level of
suspicion."
- AFP

Nice, I tot they were going to shoot or bomb d ebola.

yuncka:
Nice, I tot they were going to shoot or bomb d ebola.

i thought as well

What is happening? The other time it was US sending troops to Africa to fight EBOLA. Now it is the turn of Britain. How are we sure this is not another scramble and partition of Africa gathering momentum?

Soldiers to fight Ebola?

When I read about an emergency COBRA meeting on Ebola, I knew something was amiss.

Scared for the future of West Africa, with all the boots on the ground, trying to fight a disease.

SirShymex:
Soldiers to fight Ebola?

When I read about an emergency COBRA meeting on Ebola, I knew something was amiss.

Scared for the future of West Africa, with all the boots on the ground, trying to fight a disease.

The yanks have also send its troops. ,France will soon send troops ,italy is already training it men for possible deployment waiting 4 Kremlin

invading Africa is now a dream come true for them