There are currently 102 Peace Corps volunteers in Guinea working on agriculture, education and health, 108 in Liberia and 130 in Sierra Leone.
The European Union is equipped and ready to treat victims should the deadly virus be found in its 28 member states, an EU source said in Brussels.
“We cannot rule out the possibility that an infected person arrives in Europe but the EU has the means to track and contain any outbreak rapidly,” the source said.
The isolation and negative testing of a suspected case in Valencia in Spain showed that the “system worked”, added the source.
“The level of contamination on the ground is extremely worrying and we need to scale up our action before many more lives are lost,” said EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
– Hong Kong quarantine –
In Hong Kong, a densely populated city previously scarred by disease outbreaks such as the 2003 SARS epidemic, health officials confirmed they would quarantine as a precautionary measure any visitors from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia who showed fever symptoms.
One woman arriving in the southern Chinese city from Africa, who showed symptoms including fever and vomiting, has tested negative for Ebola.
Bart Janssens, MSF’s director of operations, warned that governments and global bodies had no “overarching view” vision of how to tackle the outbreak.
“This epidemic is unprecedented, absolutely out of control and the situation can only get worse, because it is still spreading, above all in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in some very important hotspots,” he said.
“If the situation does not improve fairly quickly, there is a real risk of new countries being affected,” he told La Libre Belgique newspaper.
A British doctor volunteering in Sierra Leone treating Ebola patients told Metro newspaper that medical staff were swamped.
“The main challenge here, though, is that the health authorities just don’t have the infrastructure to cope. They’re overwhelmed,” Benjamin Black said.
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