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EU sends Ebola airlift to West Africa

07 October 2014, 23:37 CET
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(BRUSSELS) - The European Union said Tuesday it is urgently airlifting relief goods to west Africa to combat the Ebola crisis, as the disease threatened its shores with an infection in Spain.

Three 747 jumbo jet cargo planes carrying 100 tonnes of aid will be sent to the worst-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the European Commission said.

The first plane leaves on Friday for Freetown carrying personal protection equipment including masks and gloves and medicines.

The EU was also setting up a system for the evacuation of international staff from the affected countries if they become infected, it said.

"We are in a race against time to fight Ebola," EU humanitarian commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.

The airlift and the evacuation are being funded by four million euros ($ five million) from the EU which is being allocated to the UN Children's Fund, the EU said.

The evacuation system allows patients to be flown within 48 hours to European hospitals "that are equipped to deal with the disease", the commission said.

The EU earlier Tuesday said it had asked Spain to explain how a nurse treating Ebola patients in Madrid contracted the deadly disease, the first known case of transmission outside Africa.

The nurse worked at Madrid's La Paz-Carlos III hospital, where she cared for two elderly Spanish missionaries who died from the virus after being flown home from west Africa, where the disease has killed nearly 3,500 people.

Georgieva said the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has so far pledged 180 million euros ($227 million) in aid to fight the Ebola crisis.


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