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Russian federal agency setting up evacuation service for fighting Ebola virus desease

The specialized service had been set up to check the spread of the virus if people infected with it turned up on Russia’s territory
ITAR-TASS
ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, September 02, /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Federal Medico-Biological Agency has set up a specialized evacuation service ready to throw its shoulder into the worldwide effort to curb the Ebola virus disease (EVD).

Tuesday, the agency hosts a meeting on steps to prevent the outbreaks of particularly contagious infections on the territory of Russia. It has been convened in the wake of a deteriorating situation with the EVD across the world.

A spokesperson for the agency told Itar-Tass the specialized service had been set up to check the spread of the virus if people infected with it turned up on Russia’s territory.

“The team includes infectious disease specialists, epidemics experts, resuscitators, and laboratory technicians,” he said. “All in all, the crew has sixteen specialists who have been trained for ensuring a full cycle of curing the patients with highly contagious infections.”

Tuesday’s meeting that will be held in the town of Protvino in the south of the Moscow region where the agency has a research base will bring together experts from more than twenty subordinate organizations located in different regions of Russia. They will familiarize themselves with the special EVD suits making it possible to work for a long time at the site of infection, vehicles for the transportation of patients, and an isolation transport module, with the aid of which a patient can be transported to a distant hospital.

“Modules of this type can also be used for transporting healthy people across in the infected localities without a risk of infecting them,” the spokesman said.

The World Health Organization says more than 3,000 people are infected with the Ebola virus at the moment and it has claimed more than 1,500 lives. The biggest number of lethal cases has been registered in Liberia where 694 patients have died.

In Guinea where the rate of lethal outcomes is the highest (66%) a total of 430 people have died.

Anna Popova, the chief of Russia’s sanitary and consumer rights watchdog service, Rospotrebnadzor, said earlier the Russians had no reasons to fear the penetration of the virus into Russia, since the permanent monitoring of flights and passengers arriving from the EVD-stricken countries is underway at Russian airports.