Ebola mobile lab to be sent from Italy to Sierra Leone

Part of EU initiative to fight deadly disease

(ANSA) - Rome, August 8 - The European Union is sending a mobile laboratory from Italy to combat the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, officials said on Friday. The lab, originally intended for Tanzania, is at Rome's Spallanzani Institute. It will be responsible for analyzing samples in suspected Ebola cases, and will coordinate with a Guinea-based mobile laboratory, also run by Spallanzani.

On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of Ebola in west Africa an international health emergency. It reported that 932 people have died in West Africa since early cases in December 2013, and more than 1,700 Ebola cases have been reported in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

According to Spallanzani's scientific Director Giuseppe Ippolito, the WHO's decision to raise the alarm on Ebola was expected. "The declaration of a public international health emergency, on one hand, helps to give WHO greater coordinating authority and on the other hand, (allows it) to ask for additional funding from the international community," Ippolito said.

The Ebola virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids or tissues of infected animals or people, and has a fatality rate of up to 90%. At present, there is no vaccine.