A few dozen U.S. troops will have direct exposure to potential Ebola patients by running testing labs in Liberia, the head of U.S. Africa Command said for the first time today.
While most of the 4,000 troops authorized to deploy to the west African country won’t have direct contact with victims of the virus -- as Pentagon officials have previously emphasized -- three or four specially trained personnel will run each of as many as seven testing labs, Army General David Rodriguez said at a Pentagon news conference.
“They are specifically trained to do that,” Rodriguez said of the lab personnel, which he called a “specialty element” of the larger force. .
Lab personnel will wear full protective gear, he said.
Three labs already have been set up in the country to respond to the epidemic and the military has received a request for four more, Rodriguez said.
Most of the troops in Liberia will focus on logistics, training and engineering support and won’t have direct contact with potential Ebola victims, he said. Troops are helping to build treatment centers. ,P>The U.S. mission in Liberia, which may last for about a year, is likely to cost about $750 million for the next six months, he said. "
““We had a large footprint in Africa,” Cummings said of the Defense Department’s response to the first Ebola cases reported in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. Since that time, the Defense Department has answered numerous calls for assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), nongovernmental organizations and ministries of heath and defense, he said.”