(RNS) — Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian international humanitarian relief organization, airlifted an Ebola treatment unit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo earlier this week in response to the outbreak of the deadly disease.
The airlift from Greensboro, North Carolina, to Uganda and then to neighboring Congo included a team of 23 medical specialists in the prevention and control of the disease. More medical specialists — as many as 60 people in all — may eventually work in the Ebola unit, said Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse.
“Our staff know the risk, and they know how to protect themselves, and they’re ready for the task, but it’s dangerous,” Graham said Thursday (May 28) in a phone conversation from Madrid where he is preaching on Saturday and Sunday.
There were 906 suspected cases of Ebola, with 240 suspected or confirmed deaths in the DRC, and seven confirmed cases and one death in Uganda, the DRC and Uganda Ministries of Health reported as of May 29.
Samaritan’s Purse has deep expertise in assembling emergency field hospitals and treating a host of infectious diseases. Over the past several decades, the organization has put them to use on multiple continents to address the COVID-19 pandemic, cholera, diphtheria and Ebola. It has built up a corps of Christian doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who volunteer …