U.S. troops will arrive in Liberia’s capital this weekend to set up a headquarters and begin evaluating where to build treatment centers to help fight the deadly Ebola virus, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Friday.
Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, U.S. Army commander in Africa, arrived Wednesday in Monrovia to lead the six-month effort, Kirby said. President Obama has pledged 3,000 U.S. troops to help west Africans fight the virus and the Pentagon has asked Congress to shift $1 billion in funding from the Army’s budget to pay for it.
The White House has said the troops will set up 17 treatment centers around Liberia and help train African health workers to fight the disease. They will not treat patients directly, Kirby told reporters Friday.
“There’s no intention right now that they will be interacting with patients,” he said.
Kirby said troops dispatched to Liberia will have the training and safety equipment they need to protect themselves from the disease, which has a fatality rate of about 50 percent, according to the World Health Organization. Ebola can be transmitted only through direct human contact.
“We’re clear-eyed about the risk that we’re incurring,” he said. “We get paid to deal in risk and to manage that and to mitigate it as best as we can.”
If any U.S. troops contract the virus, “we’ll do everything we can to take care of them,” Kirby said.