US personnel deployed to the Liberian capital Monrovia may in fact come into contact with Ebola patients because they will collect blood samples for testing, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
Previously, the Pentagon said the nearly 4,000 members of the US military expected in the country would not be directly dealing with the potentially ill.
Staff from the US Naval Medical Research Center will set up seven mobile laboratories to conduct tests, while the other service members establish a hospital facility and train some 500 local health care workers on managing the Ebola epidemic.
"They can operate in a nuclear, biological and chemical environment," Commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) General David M. Rodriguez assured reporters. "They are specifically trained to do that, and that's their primary skill set.
"It's a very, very high standard that these people have operated in all their lives," he stressed. "This is not just medical guys trained to do this." By November, Rodriguez expects that 17 treatment facilities will have been set up in Liberia.
"Their whole nation is overwhelmed," he said. "Their health facilities are overwhelmed. That's all broken down, so we have to bring in everything at the same time." There are currently 240 Pentagon staff in Monrovia, and another 108 in neighboring Senegal. Thousands more US personnel will be flown in over the next year.
"By providing pre-deployment training, adhering to strict medical protocols while deployed and carrying out carefully planned reintegration measures based on risk and exposure, I am confident that we can ensure our service members' safety and the safety of their families and the American people," he said.