EBOLA Several Dozen U.S. Troops to Have Contact Testing Ebola

Rayjay

Contributing Member
The echos of, "American troops are only there to build facilities." are still in my head.....

Several Dozen U.S. Troops to Have Contact Testing Ebola
A few dozen U.S. troops will have direct exposure to potential Ebola patients by running testing labs in Liberia, the head of U.S. Africa Command said for the first time today.

While most of the 4,000 troops authorized to deploy to the west African country won’t have direct contact with victims of the virus -- as Pentagon officials have previously emphasized -- three or four specially trained personnel will run each of as many as seven testing labs, Army General David Rodriguez said at a Pentagon news conference.

“They are specifically trained to do that,” Rodriguez said of the lab personnel, which he called a “specialty element” of the larger force. .

VIDEO: Troops to Have Contact With Ebola Patients: Rodriguez
Lab personnel will wear full protective gear, he said.

Three labs already have been set up in the country to respond to the epidemic and the military has received a request for four more, Rodriguez said.

Most of the troops in Liberia will focus on logistics, training and engineering support and won’t have direct contact with potential Ebola victims, he said. Troops are helping to build treatment centers.

VIDEO: Troops to Have Contact With Ebola Patients: Rodriguez
The U.S. mission in Liberia, which may last for about a year, is likely to cost about $750 million for the next six months, he said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-10-07/several-dozen-u-dot-s-dot-troops-to-have-contact-testing-ebola
 

Suzieq

Veteran Member
That is so crazy, to have military troops handling Ebola blood test for others over in Africa! Trained doctors and nurse assistants should be handling this.
 

Nowski

Let's Go Brandon!
It was the same type of discussion when US troops were sent into
Mogadishu Somalia back in 1993. The premise there was that no
European/white was willing to protect or die for Africans.

Soldiers are trained to destroy and break things.
They are not trained as good samaritans.

We all know how that turned out, in the hellhole that was and always will
be Somalia.

The troops handling the Ebola testing will be all European/whites,
and they will be all dead.

Even with high levels of protective equipment,
highly trained medical professionals are catching Ebola.

Just wait. What will be the outcry if any from the American public,
when US troops die horrendous deaths from this unstoppable disease.

Regards to all,
Nowski
 

Kris Gandillon

The Other Curmudgeon
_______________
That is so crazy, to have military troops handling Ebola blood test for others over in Africa! Trained doctors and nurse assistants should be handling this.

They have put out pleas but they are having trouble getting volunteers from the ranks of the trained doctors and nurses willing to go over there and do these tasks.

Keep in mind the native population of doctors and nurses over there are operating a ratios of 10's of thousands of citizens to 1 doctor or nurse at this time due to the number of Ebola deaths of an already limited number of health care workers (HCW) in that region.
 

shane

Has No Life - Lives on TB
The only way to assure the troops don't come back to states and infect others with
Ebola is to put them on ships when they leave that then take a month getting back.

- Shane
 

Zahra

Veteran Member
I truly despise using our soldiers in this way, and even though the majority supposedly won't be put into a position of having direct ebola patient contact I don't think there's any way to guarantee that they're totally safe from inadvertent exposure.

I sure hope the testing facilities some of them are going to have to run are state of the art, air conditioned and set up for level four conditions.

In my heart & mind however, this is an unconscionable use of our AMEDD specialists & soldiers.

Tell me, is the UN supplying troops???? What -- silence??? I didn't think so! Only good old Barry Dufusbutt Ojerkoff! ARGHHHHH!
 

shane

Has No Life - Lives on TB
They'll probably be unknowing guinea pigs for latest vaccine tests, too.

- Shane
 

hardrock

Veteran Member
They'll probably be unknowing guinea pigs for latest vaccine tests, too.

- Shane


What Shane said. When I was in basic and ait we got shots almost every weekend and they didn't even tell us what they were for.
I have taken my last shot and will rely on isolation to protect my wife and I.
 

buff

Deceased
The human effect is tragic...but..

I heard on fox news today that it will cost the USA $300 million for 8 weeks.
 

Last Resort

Veteran Member
I don't understand why the Pentagon would approve and plan a mission like this, or where they would get the volunteers to run the clinics, assuming this story is true. Who would volunteer for that duty? They would, of course, be volunteers. <sarcasm>

I'd rather do 5 years in Leavenworth than take on a mission with a 10x greater risk of death than an all-out war in Fallujah.

It's called triage, people. Isolate. Contain. Let the disease and the unfortunate hosts die/burn out.

Sending fresh meat to a hot zone is adding fuel to the fire. And I guarantee when they come back on $100+ million C-17s those transports will not be properly sterilized, containment protocols will fail, and the flight crew will become infected as well.

This is doubleplus ungood idiocy and poor thinking that is right up there with McClellan sending Union troops into the teeth of Lee's artillery at Antietam. I fear the military is doing what it thinks is a humanitarian mission without full understanding of the consequences, but I heartily hope I am wrong.
 

TheSearcher

Are you sure about that?
I'm still not happy with the use of our military to help control this over there, but I did want to relate something I heard last night. An acquaintance of mine is in the army, and she said the intended use of our people is to staff non-ebola medical facilities to free up more local medical personnel to actually fight the virus. That makes MORE sense, but who knows if her superiors, or her superiors' superiors, are accurately conveying the ground truth, right?
 
Top