China has pledged to help fight the battle against the deadly Ebola virus, which continues spreading on the African continent, by sending three teams of disease-control experts and medical supplies to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most Ebola affected West African countries.

There are nine medical personnel spread across the three teams - each having one epidemiologist and two specialists in disinfection and protection from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and other institutions. Their duties involve disinfection and protection training with local medical workers, while also helping deliver relief goods and medical supplies donated by China. 

On August 11, three Chinese cargo planes carrying 80 tons of anti-Ebola protection materials, donated by China at a value of 30 million yuan ($4.9 million), arrived in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

"The supplies are mainly anti-epidemic goods, including protective suits, disinfectants, thermometers and medicines," said Wang Shengwen, Director General of the Department of Foreign Assistance of China's Ministry of Commerce.

"The West African nations, lacking medicines and disease prevention knowledge, are in urgent need of material support and expertise as the epidemic has not yet been controlled," said Wang Yu,  Director of China CDC.

As part of the international response, China sent its first batch of relief goods  to four African countries - Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, in May, with each country recieving goods valued at 1 million yuan ($162,600). 

At the coal face

As well as the nine newly arrived disease-control experts, 38 medical personnel in three Chinese medical teams which had been working in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are staying put and continue their heroic efforts to contain any further spreading of the virus.

After 21 days in quarantine, Cao Guang, a Chinese medical personnel in Guinea, has been confirmed to have not been infected. Cao, who sees fighting Ebola as fighting a "war," had touched an Ebola patient's eyelids with his bare hands during a treatment session.

As one of the first Chinese medical workers exposed to Ebola in West Africa, Cao said from the moment they were enrolled in the medical team two years ago to work in Africa, they were prepared to face and overcome any difficulties and accomplish their tasks. 

Guinea was the first West African country to suffer an Ebola outbreak, and the first patients infected in its capital Conakry were treated in March in the Sino-Guinean Friendship Hospital where the Chinese medical team is based. Nine medical workers in this hospital were infected, and six of them died.

"Two Chinese medical workers, including Cao Guang, who had contact with the first patient, were put in isolation. Fortunately, they tested negative," said Kong Qingyu, leader of the Chinese medical team in Guinea. "Now, we continue receiving patients and work as normal."

The Chinese Government has been giving medical assistance to Guinea since June 1968 and the current team is the 23rd, with 19 members from Beijing Anzhen Hospital.

"There is a high risk of getting infected after having contact with patients who have the disease. However, the virus has rarely gone airborne or spread through water and food," Kong said, adding that in addition to an emergency plan to cope with Ebola outbreaks, one thing his team is focusing on is to help local people get to know how to prevent Ebola spreading.

The nine-member Chinese medical team in Liberia said they would remain in the country to assist the local government, which has announced a national state of emergency after the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.

"There used to be doctors from other countries at the hospital where we are working in Monrovia [capital of Liberia]. But shortly after the Ebola outbreak, some have left, including those from the United States and Egypt," said medical team leader Zhou Yongjun. "But we, Chinese medical workers, still remain here."

The medical team, which comes from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, first arrived in Liberia in 2013. This April, they gave lectures on Ebola control and prevention to local medical workers, and later the team went out to spread knowledge about Ebola prevention to locals in Monrovia, Zhou said.

The Ebola virus began to spread in Sierra Leone in May this year. The 16th Chinese medical team in this country has 10 members who are now helping at the Kingharman Hospital of Freetown.

"All the team members are still working," said team leader Wang Yaowen. "Though the Sierra Leone Government has taken measures to control the virus, it is still hard to say how the epidemic situation will evolve. As doctors, it is our duty to help whenever and wherever an emergency occurs. We will stay here and do our job." 

International support needed

On August 8, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a "public health emergency of international concern," which requires an extraordinary response to stop it spreading.

WHO Director General, Dr. Margaret Chan, called the outbreak "the largest, most severe and most complex" in the nearly 40-year history of the disease. She urged the international community to provide support on the most urgent basis as soon as possible, because "countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own."

The WHO also said inexperience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks and misperceptions of the disease, including how it is transmitted, "continue to be a major challenge in some communities."

"We need many more contributions from the international community, from governments, from NGOs, academic institutions, from anyone who can provide us with doctors, nurses, health staff, and other public health staff," said WHO spokesperson Gregory Hartl.

In dealing with the epidemics of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the H7N9 bird flu virus in recent years, China has accumulated valuable experience in the control and prevention of public health emergencies. The experience can also be applied to West African nations in the fight against Ebola, according to Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO Assistant Director General for Health Security.

Apart from Chinese medical teams, a number of international organizations such as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have been working in the field to bring the spreading of Ebola epidemic under control since March. Currently, its 66 international and 610 African staff are working in Ebola case management centers, responding to the crisis in the three most affected countries, according to Dr. Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations.

Dr. Janssens said the organization has reached the limits of its capacity, calling for countries possessing necessary capacities to immediately dispatch available infectious disease experts and disaster relief assets to the region. "All of the following need to be radically scaled up: medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community mobilization and education," he said .

With no signs of an end to the Ebola virus spreading and no available cure, WHO announced its approval on August 12 for the use of experimental drugs in the fight against the virus, the first time the organization gave a green light to unproven, unlicensed drugs to be used on humans. Canada and the United States have provided sample doses to severely affected African countries.

While two Americans infected with the disease have reportedly seen improvements after using the experimental ZMapp drugs, the drug did not work for the infected Spanish priest. The use of experimental drugs in the fight against Ebola has attracted debates, on not only its effect and consequence, but also the ethical issues.

"In the particular circumstances of this outbreak, and provided certain conditions are met... it is ethical to offer unproven interventions with as yet unknown efficacy and adverse effects," said the WHO in a statement.

The WHO has also said the epidemic will likely continue for months as the region's healthcare systems struggle to cope and has appealed for more funding and emergency medical staff from the international community.