Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
In 2015, the Chinese Government sent a third medical team from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to Liberia to operate the Chinese-funded Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) in in the Samuel Kanyon Doe (SKD) Sports Complex in Paynesville City outside Monrovia (see linked Record ID#45030). This team consisted of 42 PLA members recruited from Chengdu Military Region, the Second Military Medical University, the Fourth Military Medical University, the PLA General Hospital, etc. Since November, 2014, the PLA has sent 361 medical workers in three teams from the PLA General Hospital, three military medical universities, the Shenyang, Beijing and Chengdu military area commands, to Liberia, where the Chinese military medical teams gave treatment to Ebola patients and trained more than 6,000 local medical workers. The PLA's third medical team to Liberia is presumed to have arrived around March 14, 2015, which is when the second team was due to handover their post. Liberia was officially declared ebola-free by the WHO on May 9, 2015, so on May 12, 2015, the Government of Liberia and the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Liberia held a decommissioning ceremony, bringing to an end the PLA third medical team's work. The team returned to Bejing on May 17, 2015. The assistance provided by the first and third PLA medical teams is captured in linked umbrella Record ID#41552.