Some 100 experts from 19 countries on Monday attended the first ever international course on the deadly Ebola virus, held in Cuba's capital Havana.
The five-day event primarily aims to train health-care workers, who deal with infected patients, to prevent the spread of the highly contagious virus, Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported.
At the opening session, Jorge Perez Avila, director of Cuba's Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine, which was hosting the event, said "no one is exempt from danger," according to the agency.
The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa shows the disease has a "high mortality rate of between 50 and 60 percent of patients," Perez said.
Almost all the participants of the course are from Latin American countries, which have mobilized to prevent an outbreak in the region that could lead to a multinational health emergency, as has happened in Africa. Mozambique is the only African country participating in the course, the agency said.
Through Friday, participants will receive instructions on diagnosing and treating patients, as well as proper safety procedures for medical staff.
The course is one of several health initiatives that emerged from a regional emergency meeting on Ebola, held in Havana in mid-October and co-organized by the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).
Cuba is widely credited for being at the forefront of the international response to the Ebola crisis, sending 256 doctors and nurses trained at the Kouri Institute on a mission to help combat the outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the three African countries most affected by the epidemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the current outbreak has claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 people.