South Korea’s first batch of 10 medical personnel left for Britain on Saturday as part of a mission to help Ebola-hit Sierra Leone cope with the highly contagious disease, the foreign ministry said.
The team of four doctors and six nurses left for Worcester, north of London, where they will receive safety education from Dec. 15-20.
They will then leave for Sierra Leone a day later and begin full-fledged work on Dec. 29 for four weeks at an Ebola clinic being built by Britain in Goderich, near the capital, Freetown, after a week of on-the-job training there.
South Korea plans to dispatch a total of 30 medical workers in three batches to the Ebola clinic. The second batch is expected to leave Seoul on Jan. 10 and the remainder likely will be sent on Feb. 7, the ministry added.
Separately, Seoul will send a team of three government officials to support the work of the medical personnel to Sierra Leone on Tuesday.
The move is part of Seoul’s efforts to join the international community’s drive to help contain Ebola in West Africa.
In October, South Korean President Park Geun-hye announced the plan to send a group of doctors and nurses there. Ebola is estimated to have killed more than 6,000 people since December 2013.
The government said that if South Korean medical workers become infected with the virus, they will be transported to hospitals in Europe via civilian and military aircraft run by the European Union.
The idea of transporting infected medical workers to Seoul has been dismissed due to safety concerns and the long flight time, the ministry said.
The 10 medical workers will be quarantined in South Korea for 21 days, the incubation period of the virus, when they return home.
Seoul has said that the team of volunteer medical workers was picked based on their level of expertise, adding that a higher-than-expected number of medical personnel has applied for the mission.
The government said earlier this week that it will provide an additional $5 million in assistance to Ebola-hit West Africa in line with its move to send the medical personnel. Seoul has so far provided $5.6 million to global efforts to fight the Ebola virus. (Yonhap)
