The Federal Government has defended the time it is taking to send Australian health workers to west Africa to help contain the Ebola outbreak.
It will take another month before the Australian-funded treatment centre in Sierra Leone begins operating.
The Government initially held off from sending health workers to West Africa until it had a guarantee any Australians who might become infected would get treatment.
However, it was revealed the Federal Government had not accepted a guarantee from the European Union more than two weeks ago to treat health workers infected with Ebola.
Yesterday, the Government announced a deal had been reached with the United Kingdom – but it was not clear why it did not accept a similar offer from the European Union last month.
On October 20, the EU Foreign Affairs Council announced international health workers who became infected would be provided with appropriate care.
“In order to encourage additional health personnel to work on the ground, the EU is providing a guarantee that international health workers who volunteer will be provided with appropriate care, locally or through medical evacuation, within available resources, should they become infected,” it said in a statement.
However, Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton confirmed yesterday an agreement was reached with the UK which would provide better security for health workers.
“We’ve taken a guarantee from the British and we’ve obviously been very pleased with the response from some European countries,” Mr Dutton said.
“We have arrangements in place now, guarantees if you like that weren’t there before, that mean that we can provide security for our health workers.
“It would have been completely irresponsible to take up Labor’s call weeks ago, before the guarantees were in place to send healthcare workers, and again I think we have acted on the best advice available and we have provided a response of which all Australians can be very proud,” he said.
World Health Organisation (WHO) Ebola spokeswoman Margaret Harris said it was for each nation to decide the circumstances of their involvement.
“More and more countries are sending more people and we really appreciate the help,” she said.
Meanwhile, Aspen Medical has announced Australia will send no more than 50 volunteers at a time to help Ebola patients in the British-built Ebola treatment hospital in Sierra Leone.
The Government announced it would commit up to $20 million in funding for private company Aspen Medical to run the 100-bed Ebola treatment clinic, which would employ about 240 staff.
Aspen’s executive director Glenn Keys told Radio National only 10 to 20 per cent of the clinic’s workers would be Australian recruits.
Mr Keys said many Australians would end up contributing because of rotations.
He said no more than a fifth of the staff at most would be Australian on any rotation.
“We are obviously looking for people who will support the delivery of this operation as well as training the number of local staff part of the delivery of service,” he said.
“We have now had, as of this morning, almost 350 people register on our website which is just a fantastic effort and a real commitment on behalf of Australians I think to help in this crisis.
“We will be rotating crews through all the time. You do that for a number of reasons, but critically because you don’t want people to become fatigued, or make mistakes.
“So there could be quite large numbers of Australians rotate through over the period of the deployment which is still to be defined but it will be in the region of six to eight months.
“The numbers will ebb and flow depending on rotation, clinical mix and people’s availability.
“The British clinic that our staff would be able to go into was only opened yesterday morning.”
Mr Dutton told ABC’s AM program he expected Aspen to be on the ground within a couple of days.
“In fact they’ve already got a presence otherwise in West Africa. We expect within three or four weeks that the staffing will take place and will be in the field helping to save lives and delivering a 100-bed facility which I think will make a big difference on the ground,” he said.
“We can train [a local team] up and capacity build so that the health system is stronger when people leave Sierra Leone after the Ebola virus is dealt with – sometime far down the track.”
WHO revises death toll down for second time
Meanwhile, the WHO revised down its death toll from the Ebola virus to 4,818.
This is lower than the most recently reported figure of 4,951, reported on October 31.
The death toll reflected lower confirmed fatalities in eight countries, which related to “other factors”.
The number of reported cases has fallen from 13,567 to 13,042.
The latest outbreak of Ebola hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone hardest, with the majority of new deaths and cases arising from those three West African countries.
Liberia remained the hardest hit country, with 2,697 deaths out of a total of 6,525 cases.
In Sierra Leone, 1,070 people died from the virus out of 4,759 cases.
In Guinea, 1,041 deaths have been recorded out of 1,731 cases.
Data from Nigeria and Senegal remained unchanged, and both countries remained free of the virus.