Health workers are demanding more clarity about the number of Australian volunteers who will be involved in the Ebola treatment centre Australia is funding 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 was being built by the United Kingdom and would employ about 240 staff.
Aspen Medical said it expected the number of Australian volunteers at the hospital to be “significant”, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott said most of the staff would be locally engaged.
Federal secretary of the Nursing and Midwifery Association Lee Thomas said hundreds of Australian nurses wanted to volunteer and they would be needed.
“It is completely impossible for locally educated health practitioners in West Africa to cope, there are just not enough,” she said.
Ms Thomas said qualified Australian volunteers should be given the opportunity to help.
“Whilst it’s important to train local people, the relief effort in West Africa must be supported by Australian and other healthcare workers from around the world, that’s the only way they are going to cope,” she said.
Health Minister Peter Dutton defended the Government’s plans to support more training for West Africans.
“Not only will we be able to facilitate Australian healthcare workers but also local workforce,” he told the ABC’s Lateline program.
“I think that’s incredibly important, to build capacity on the ground so they can deal with any future health threats after the Ebola crisis has passed.”
Mr Dutton maintained Australian volunteers would be part of the relief effort but he said it was too early to say how many.
“We will send Australians, and Australians – as Glenn Keys, the CEO of Aspen, has already pointed out – about 130 already have registered their interest and we expect that to grow beyond that,” he said.
Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke said Australia should also be deploying a military contingent to West Africa.
“We know that we have to contain the impact of the Ebola spread and to do this more treatment centres need to be built,” she said.
“This is why Oxfam continues to ask for consideration that the military has a role to play in being deployed to build those treatment centres.”
Medical evacuation agreement in place since October: EU
The announcement comes as a European Union statement said medical evacuations had been in place for all international aid workers in West Africa since October 20.
The Government earlier announced it had secured a deal with the UK to treat Australian patients.
But the statement from the EU reveals international aid workers, including Australians, have been subject to a special agreement for evacuation and treatment in European hospitals for weeks.
The statement said humanitarian workers infected with Ebola could be evacuated within 48 hours and taken to an equipped hospital – with requests to be assessed by the World Health Organisation.
Almost 5,000 people have died, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, in the worst epidemic of Ebola since it was identified in 1976.
There have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in Australia, however a number of people have been tested after returning from West Africa.
Four people have been tested for Ebola in Western Australia, a parliamentary committee hearing has heard.
They all tested negative.