Canadian Forces medics heading to Sierra Leone for Ebola fight

The federal government says Canadian Armed Forces health-care workers and support staff will travel to Sierra Leone on Saturday to begin an Ebola-related mission.

As well, the government says a second mobile testing laboratory and the scientists who operate it will travel to Sierra Leone to service a new Doctors Without Borders management centre at Magburaka.

The 40 Armed Forces personnel left Canada in early December and in the interval have been training for the Ebola mission in Britain.

The team is made up of military doctors, physicians’ assistants, nurses, medics and support staff _ they will be working at the Kerry Town Ebola treatment facility being run by British armed forces personnel in Freetown.

Canada has been operating a mobile laboratory in Sierra Leone since June; it is based at Kailahun in the eastern part of the country.

A second lab team went to Sierra Leone earlier in the autumn to help Doctors Without Borders investigate how health-care workers are becoming infected with Ebola, but returned to Canada after that assignment was completed.

“The additional deployment of Public Health Agency of Canada scientists further demonstrates Canada’s commitment to help stopping the spread of Ebola in West Africa,” Health Minister Rona Ambrose said in a release.

Canada has committed more than $110 million to the effort to stop the West African outbreak, the largest in history. More than 18,603 have been infected in the year-old outbreak, and at least 6,915 have died.

The Kerry Town treatment centre where the Canadian Forces personnel will work has been set up primarily to provide care for local and international health-care workers who contract Ebola.

The outbreak has taken an enormous toll on health-care workers in the affected countries. Earlier this week the World Health Organization said 649 health-care workers have contracted the disease and 365 have died. Most of those health-care workers are from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three main countries affected by this outbreak.

The scientists who operate the mobile testing labs typically work a four-week deployment. The military health-care personnel will be rotated every two months during this mission, the government says.

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