Treatment Facility Construction Continues in Liberia

[nitpicker]

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123412

Treatment Facility Construction Continues in Liberia

By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

(snip)
The soldiers dispatched to the West African region bring the total there to about 565, with several thousand projected to go this fall.
(snip)

The main tent structure assembly is complete for the 25-bed hospital, Warren said, and building of supporting facilities will continue, with completion projected next week. Tent assembly for the first Ebola treatment unit began Oct. 4 and additional site preparation is necessary before vertical construction can begin, he added, with completion expected by the end of the month.

Construction for the second Ebola treatment unit, he said, is expected to begin in the next few days, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 1.
(snip)

Additionally, the colonel said, three mobile testing laboratories, complete as of Oct. 3, are up and running and have respectively processed 716, 320, and 88 samples.

[Warpy]

1. I hope the facilities stay primitive enough to allow sunlight in

because that's the low tech way to kill the virus.

Here, they're going to have to start bringing in Little Moe units once Ebola starts to spread.

[nitpicker]

2. U.S. Ebola force continues to build in West Africa

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20141015/NEWS08/310150072/U-S-Ebola-force-continues-build-West-Africa

U.S. Ebola force continues to build in West Africa
Oct. 15, 2014 - 08:36PM
By Patricia Kime
Staff writer

(snip)
In a Skype interview with attendees at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Williams said U.S. troops — some of whom have been in West Africa now a month — have finished building a hospital for infected health workers in Monrovia, are nearing completion of the first couple of 17 area Ebola treatment centers and are manning at least five mobile laboratories for testing specimens.

Williams said the “lion’s share” of the work on the 17 treatment centers will be completed by late November or early December, providing 1,700 beds throughout the region for Ebola patients.

According to Williams, roughly 540 troops and Pentagon civilians of a planned 3,200 have arrived in the region, including Navy Seabees, a Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response team with four MV-22 Osprey aircraft, airmen with the 62nd Airlift Wing, soldiers and Coast Guardsmen.

Troops from the 101st Airborne Division and Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, who is slated to assume command of the operation, are expected to arrive in the coming days.

The service members will provide command and control, logistics and engineering support to the local governments, nongovernmental organizations and health workers battling the Ebola epidemic.

(snip)

[nitpicker]

3. DoD response Oct 15 at the Pentagon presser

http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5520

(snip)
REAR ADM. KIRBY: Let me see if I can give you an update on the -- so for the 25-bed facility, all the site preparation has been completed. The main tent structure assembly is complete. Construction of the supporting facilities continues. The target date for the completion of that is the 21st of this month. The 25-bed facility will be manned by public health service employees, and we expect that team to arrive by the end of October.

On the emergency treatment units, as you know, we've commenced work on two of them. One of them is still on track to be completed by the end of the month. The second one is still on track to be completed by around the first week or so in November, so shortly after that.

There are 17 eventual ETUs that are going to be stood up. Not all of them are right now scheduled to be constructed by U.S. troops. The majority are, but not all of them, so -- now, that could change over time. I get that. But that's -- that's where we are right now.

Q: And who are those that are helping -- who are the others that are helping to build that, so it's not troops, just troops?

REAR ADM. KIRBY: U.N. The U.N. is responsible for the other ones. I don't want to guess. I think it's -- well, I won't guess right now. But the majority of the 17 are -- we're responsible for building. But, again, that could change. We -- I just don't know. We're going to be flexible. We've got great expertise down there.

I would also add that, while we -- we see the construction as sort of on pace right now, the weather continues to be a real factor there. It's still -- it's the rainy season, and there are hours and hours every day where our troops are not able to work, just because you can't -- you can't build, you can't -- you can't prepare a site in a monsoon. So we need to be flexible here, as I -- everything's on track. But that could change, too, over time.