MOSCOW, November 20 (Sputnik) — Beijing has offered Guinea $5 million in aid to roll back the deadly Ebola epidemic, China's Xinhua news agency said Thursday.
"This additional aid from China will reinforce the efforts by the Guinean government in its daily battle to eradicate this outbreak which has become a major global concern," Guinean International Cooperation Minister Moustapha Sanoh was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
According to the agency, the money will be used to buy ambulances, beds and protective equipment for Ebola treatment centers.
Earlier in November, China dispatched a team of 160 health workers to Liberia, one of the three worst-hit countries in West Africa, the others being Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The current Ebola outbreak began in southern Guinea in December 2013 and soon spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. The latter two countries have recently been declared free of the virus.
There have been 15,145 reported cases of Ebola virus disease, with 5,420 deaths among them, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) data. A total of six confirmed or probable cases and five deaths have also been reported in Mali. The WHO stressed in a situation report Wednesday that infections and deaths continued to be under-reported.
