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Seoul to send medical team to Ebola-hit Sierra Leone

Posted November. 27, 2014 07:39,   

한국어

Korea will send a batch of medical staff to Ebola-hit Sierra Leone on Dec. 13.

The Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Health and Welfare Ministry released their schedules and activities in a joint briefing on Wednesday.

According to them, the first team of medical workers will consist of 10 members – four doctors and six nurses – who were recruited and selected by the Health and Welfare Ministry and the Defense Ministry. They will have the first safety training in Korea from Dec. 8 through 10 and head for Sierra Leone on Dec. 13. They will have the second safety training in Worcester near London from Dec. 15 through 20. They arrive at the treatment center in Goderich outside the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, on Dec. 21 and have an on-the-job training for a week and start treatment. Seoul will send a team of 10 medical workers three times and each team will stay in the country for four to six weeks.

The Ebola hospital in Goderich built by the British government and run by Italian-based medical charity Emergency will be completed on Dec. 15. Korean medical workers will volunteer personnel from other countries including the U.K., Italy, the U.S. and Australia. The Korean government considers sharing some of the operation costs of the hospital.

A medical worker who is infected with Ebola during the stay will be treated in a medical facility in Europe. A source from the Foreign Ministry said, “We chose Europe because it takes more than 20 hours to carry a patient from Sierra Leone to Korea, and the plane cannot land in other countries.” The Korean government will soon sign a memorandum of understanding on the transportation of patients and treatment in Europe with the British government soon. The medical workers who have no Ebola symptoms will be sequestered for 21 days after they returned to Korea. The advance team, which checked working conditions in the U.K. and Sierra Leone from Nov. 11 through 25, came back to Korea on Tuesday.