US Scaling Back Number of Ebola Treatment Units in Liberia
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Ruslan Olinchuk/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren confirmed on Wednesday that the United States is scaling back the number of planned Ebola treatment units in Liberia from 17 to 10.
That means that instead of setting up health facilities with 1,700 beds, there will actually be 650 beds.
Currently, the U.S. military has 2,591 personnel for the Ebola mission — 243 of them are in Senegal and the rest are in Liberia.
The U.S. is also going to reduce the number of beds in the six other facilities still under construction. Those units will now have only 50 beds each, instead of the 100 originally planned.
The United States had gone into Liberia with plans to set up 17 100-bed Ebola treatment units. But once military personnel got the ball rolling, rainy weather and infrastructure problems significantly slowed down their construction.
Only one of the 100-bed units is currently open; another two will be open by this weekend. The 10th and final unit will be up and running by the first week of December.
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