Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in the Waterloo district of Freetown on Tuesday.
Reuters/Monrovia
A team of Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Liberia yesterday to help to fight the worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus on record alongside a US military mission deploying in the West Africa country.
A jet from the national airline Cubana carrying the 51 medical personnel touched down at 1045 GMT at the Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia, a stone’s throw from a new Ebola clinic built by US forces.
The doctors and nurses, dressed in white uniforms, disembarked from the aircraft waving Cuban flags.
The US is gradually deploying troops to Liberia as part of a 3,000-strong mission to help overwhelmed West African nations cope with the epidemic by building Ebola Treatment Units and training local medical staff.
Washington’s relations with Havana have remained frosty since the Cold War, when the US broke diplomatic ties and imposed a comprehensive trade embargo on the communist-run Caribbean island.
“We are ready 100% to collaborate with the Americans,” Cuba’s Ambassador to Liberia Jorge Lefebre Nicolas told Reuters at the airport.
“We should fight against Ebola and anything else should be put aside. We cannot see our brothers from Africa in difficult times and sit folding our arms in Cuba.”
Cuban and US personnel have worked together before, notably after the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Some Cuban officials have voiced hope that collaboration in fighting Ebola could help mend relations between the long-time adversaries.
The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 4,500 people since it was detected in March, most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). While outbreaks in Senegal and Nigeria have been declared over, there have been a few cases in Spain and the US.
Cuba is sending the largest medical contingent to West Africa from any country in the world. The first group of 165 doctors and nurses deployed to Sierra Leone at the start of October and another group of around 40 medical staff is due in neighbouring Guinea.
Cuban authorities have trained 461 doctors and nurses but so far only 256 have been sent on missions scheduled to last six months. The others remain in Cuba awaiting an assignment that depends on funding from the UN, an invitation from the host countries and suitable infrastructure on the ground.
Liberia, which is still struggling to recover from a devastating 1989-2003 civil war, has seen its healthcare system buckle.
It had only around 50 trained doctors before the outbreak, several of whom have since died from the virus, and it has desperately appealed for foreign health workers.
Liberia’s deputy minister of health told the Cubans their arrival meant that newly built Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) in the dilapidated ocean-front capital could be put to work.
“Given that you are here in Liberia now, we will be going to the jungles and towns to make sure that all sick people will be brought to the ETU so you can assist to treat them,” Matthew Flomo said.
