[AnNahar] China will send more medics to Ebola-hit Sierra Leone to help boost laboratory testing for the virus, raising the total number of Chinese medical experts there to 174, the UN said Tuesday."The most urgent immediate need in the Ebola response is for more medical staff," World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan said in a statement, hailing the Chinese commitment.
China has said it will dispatch a mobile laboratory team to Sierra Leone, where more than 500 people have died so far from Ebola.
It will send a 59-person team from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control, including epidemiologists, clinicians and nurses, WHO said.
"The newly announced team will join 115 Chinese medical staff on the ground in Sierra Leone virtually since the beginning," Chan said, stressing that the new commitment was "a huge boost, morally and operationally."
The Chinese contribution comes in response to WHO's urgent appeal to countries around the globe to step up their assistance to help bring the raging epidemic under control.
The International Federation of Red Thingy and Red Islamic Thingy Societies (IFRC) meanwhile announced late Monday that it had opened its first Ebola treatment center in Kenema, one of the districts of Sierra Leone worst affected by the deadly outbreak.
The center, which is staffed with 19 international workers and 80 national employees, will have room for 60 patients, IFRC said.
The first patients, including an 11-year-old girl from Freetown, were already being treated there, it added.