BEIJING: China will dispatch an elite unit of the People’s Liberation Army to help Ebola-hit Liberia, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday, responding to UN calls for a greater global effort to fight the deadly virus in West Africa.
The PLA squad, which has experience from a 2002 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), will build a 100-bed treatment centre in Liberia, the first such facility in the three countries most impacted by Ebola to be constructed and run by a foreign country, said Lin Songtian, director general of the ministry’s Department of African Affairs.
The centre will be open for operation in a month’s time, he told a briefing in Beijing. China will also dispatch 480 PLA medical staff to treat Ebola patients, he said.
It’s the first time China has deployed a whole unit of epidemic prevention forces and military medical staff abroad, Lin said.
China is Africa’s biggest trade partner, tapping the continent’s rich vein of resources to fuel its own economic growth over the past couple of decades. Some critics have rounded on Beijing for not helping more in Africa’s hour of need.
China has so far donated 750 million yuan ($123m) to 13 African countries and international organisations to combat Ebola, according to the government.
Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd., a Chinese drug maker, has sent several thousand doses of an experimental Ebola drug to Africa and is planning clinical trials there.
REUTERS
