US Army fighting Ebola in West Africa

Military Responders Help Battle Ebola Outbreak
US Department of Defense
By Terri Moon Cronk and Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2014

Defense Department personnel are on the ground in West Africa and in U.S. laboratories fighting to control the worst outbreak in the African history of the Ebola virus, which a senior Army infectious disease doctor called a “scourge of mankind.”

Army Col. (Dr.) James Cummings, director of the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System, or GEIS, a division of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, said the battle against the virus since the outbreak began in West Africa in March focuses on trying to stop disease transmission. At the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, or CDC, in Atlanta, Director Dr. Tom Frieden has announced that the health agency has raised the travel advisory to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone where he said the Ebola outbreak is worsening, to Level 3 -- a warning to avoid unnecessary travel to those countries.

CDC already has disease detectives and other staff in those countries to track the epidemic, advise embassies, coordinate with the World Health Organization, or WHO, strengthen ministries of health, and improve case finding, contact tracing, infection control and health communication.

Over the next 30 days, in what Frieden described as a surge, CDC will send another 50 disease-control specialists into the three countries to help establish emergency operations centers and develop structured ways to address the outbreak.

“They will also help strengthen laboratory networks so testing for the disease can be done rapidly,” the director said.

For travelers in and out of the three West African countries, CDC experts will strengthen country capacity to monitor those who may have been exposed to Ebola, and each country in the region has committed to doing this, Frieden said.

“It's not easy to do,” he added, “but we will have experts from our division that do airport screening and try to ensure that people who shouldn't be traveling aren't traveling.”
read more here