The EU Mobile Labs Project has provided one of the first labs against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. A mobile unit was deployed to Guinea in March 2014, at the outbreak's onset. It has provided diagnosis for a large fraction of the samples collected - 3000 during the first 6 months, identifying over 1000 positive cases. Up to 70 samples per day have been processed, with diagnosis available within 4 hours. Two additional mobile labs have been deployed to Nigeria and Liberia.
The Ebola outbreak has already taken many lives in Western Africa, and the long-term economic consequences for affected countries are likely to be dramatic. Such crises can easily spiral out of control and affect other parts of the world, including the European Union. So, what is the EU doing to address this major health crisis? And what can we learn from it in order to avoid facing a similar situation in the future?
