Britain to Send 750 Troops to Sierra Leone to Help Fight Ebola
Britain will send 750 military personnel to Sierra Leone to help combat the Ebola outbreak.
It will also send RFA Argus, a ship with a fully functional hospital on board, and three Merlin helicopters.
The decision to send the troops was made at a meeting of Cobra, the government's emergency response committee, on Wednesday.
After the meeting, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that Ebola was an unprecedented threat with no boundaries.
"We have to get ahead of this disease, but if we get ahead of it, if we rise to the challenge, we can contain it and beat it. We know how to do this, it is not complicated to do, it just requires a large focus of resource and effort to deliver it," he said, reports The Telegraph.
Elaborating further, Hammond asked the international community to deliver more resources like trained medical personnel to help in the anti Ebola efforts. He said that every nation have to step up their contributions to prevent the present crisis from becoming a disaster.
Describing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as a global threat, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said that it was important that Britain remained at the forefront in the fight against the epidemic.
The British efforts in the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone include a commitment to build at least four new Ebola treatment facilities with a total of 700 beds near Port Loko, Freetown, Makeni and Bo, reports The Guardian.
The Military personnel will leave for Sierra Leone next week where they will join British military engineers and health workers who are already in the country overseeing the construction of the medical facilities.
However, Military injuries claims solicitor Philippa Tuckman said that the deployment of the troops carried high risks. She hoped that the training and medical support given to the troops was enough in safeguarding them from the virus. Tuckman also said that the Ministry of Defense would not like to put itself in a situation where people will question its commitment in safeguarding its soldiers from Ebola, reports The Guardian.
