PRATICA DI MARE AIR BASE, Italy (AP) — The patient, a slight woman in her 30s, lay motionless on the stretcher as a half-dozen men in biohazard suits transferred her from a C-27J cargo plane into an ambulance and then into a mobile hospital isolation ward, never once breaking the plastic seal encasing her.

The exercise put on Wednesday was just a simulation of the procedures that would be used to evacuate an Ebola patient to Italy. But for Italian military, Red Cross and health care workers, it offered essential experience, especially for those on the front lines of the country’s sea-rescue operation involving thousands of African migrants who arrive here every day in smugglers’ boats.