Chinese experts wrap up Guinea Ebola mission

CONAKRY, Aug. 15 -- Three Chinese public health emergency experts sent to the Ebola-affected West African nation of Guinea have successfully wrapped up their mission and returned home on Friday night, an official with the Chinese Embassy said here Friday.

Another three public health emergency experts from Beijing's Disease Prevention and Control Center, Ditan Hospital and Peking Union Medical College Hospital, left for Guinea early Saturday.

Together with them are the 24th Chinese medical team, who are from the Beijing Friendship Hospital, for a two-year aid mission in Guinea.

"Chinese experts work efficiently and everything went well," the commercial counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Guinea, Gao Tiefeng, said at the farewell ceremony.

The experts, composed of one epidemiologist and two specialists in disinfection and protection, worked with local medical teams to share their expertise in controlling and preventing disease, and trained local medical workers on personal protection, disinfection and biological safety.

"We have been committed to our mission here and fulfilled it," the team leader Sun Hui said at the ceremony.

China, deeply concerned over the spread of the deadly virus, has sent disease control experts to three Ebola-affected West African nations -- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra -- marking the first time China has provided assistance to foreign countries in the form of dispatching taskforces of public health emergency experts.