European medical staff fighting Ebola to train in Darwin

Medical professionals from Geneva and Australia will endure the heat of the Top End as they train before being deployed to west Africa to fight Ebola.

A three-day training program funded with $2 million from the federal government is being run by humanitarian agency RedR in conjunction with the World Health Organisation, its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, and Charles Darwin University, among others.

Twenty-four public health specialists and epidemiologists from Europe and Australia have been identified by WHO for immediate field deployments to west Africa, where they will primarily work in active case finding and contact tracing, rather than offering frontline care.

Dr Nicholas Coatsworth, executive director at the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre in Darwin, will teach participants about personal protective equipment on Monday and his colleague will teach them how to manage heat stress in high humidity.

"Darwin's climate and environment is a better familiarisation for what they will be (experiencing) in Africa," a RedR spokeswoman said.

The course will provide training in human security and safety in the field, infection prevention and control practices, the epidemiology of Ebola and other humanitarian issues.

The course follows the departure of the first Australian team with Aspen Medical to Sierra Leone on Friday to operate a British field hospital funded by the Australian government.