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Johns Hopkins experts help train Congolese health workers to fight Ebola

Goal is to train 1,000 to combat outbreak in West Africa

As Ebola continues to all-too-swiftly spread and inflict its human toll in West Africa, overstretched and undermanned health care systems need all hands on deck. Johns Hopkins wants to help send in a cavalry.

A team of faculty members from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, School of Nursing, and the School of Medicine are assisting in an effort to train 1,000 Democratic Republic of Congo health care workers—including nurses, doctors, lab techs, and hygienists—to combat the outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

The health care workers first will be trained in the DRC, then sent in waves to the West African locations where they are needed most. The first group will be deployed later this month.

"There simply are not enough health care workers in regions of Liberia now to effectively deal with this outbreak," said David Peters, chair of the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School and the team leader for the Johns Hopkins involvement in this initiative. "We need them."

Johns Hopkins researchers will all also work with those in Liberia and DRC to improve data collection and analysis, and to improve modeling based on this data for both epidemic response and preparedness.

The initiative, which will be logistically handled by UNICEF, is based on the Democratic Republic of Congo's experience in effectively dealing with seven Ebola outbreaks since 1976, and that government's offer to provide trained health workers to Liberia to assist with combating the current Ebola outbreak.

Peters, who recently returned from Liberia, said the DRC has a lot to offer, both in terms of manpower and capability.

"They've witnessed firsthand that a quick response is the most important," Peters says. "You also need comprehensive community outreach, good case identification and isolation, good burial measures, and good medical care. This is the type of knowledge we're looking to help pass on."