South Korea has successfully completed its near three-month Ebola relief mission in the West African nation of Sierra Leone without reporting any cases of contagion among its medical workers, officials said Monday.
Seoul's third and last team of two doctors and three nurses was scheduled to return home later Monday after wrapping up its monthlong mission at an Ebola treatment center in Goderich, near Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown.
South Korea dispatched a total of 24 doctors and nurses in three batches to the treatment facility since mid-December. Each team worked for about one month, helping test and treat patients of the highly contagious epidemic.
It is the first time the South Korean government has sent an emergency relief team to fight the outbreak of an epidemic overseas.
No case of contagion has been reported among the South Korean medical workers although the returning team will undergo the necessary three-week quarantine at a local facility after entering the country later in the day, according to the officials.
A group of foreign and defense ministry officials, who were in Sierra Leone to support the relief mission, is also expected to come home with the medical team, the officials noted.
Wrapping up the Ebola relief mission, the government plans to devise various bilateral and multilateral projects to further help the Ebola-hit country.
The death toll from the deadly virus is believed to exceed 10,000 in the West African region, including Guinea and Liberia. (Yonhap)