About a quarter of the U.S. troops stationed in the Ebola zone to help control the deadly virus should be brought home soon because they accomplished "a lot of their mission" already, according to U.S. Senator Chris Coons.
President Barack Obama sent 4,000 U.S. military personnel to the area last fall to build treatment centers and do other work that doesn't involve direct contact with Ebola patients, reported Business Week.
Coons, who told Business Week he visited 2,400 troops from the 101st Airborne Division now in Liberia, believes it's time to start bringing some of the troops back home.
"They're currently bored because they've accomplished a lot of their mission of building infrastructure, building new Ebola treatment units all over the country, deploying new military testing labs all over the country, and setting up a vital infrastructure," Coons told Business Week.
Coons, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African affairs, added that by bringing the troops back home the U.S. can make better use of the money being spent on these military personnel since their job is apparently close to done.
As of Dec. 31 there were 7,890 reported deaths in the Ebola zone - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - during the outbreak, according to the World Health Organization's most recent situation report.
Over the past month the number of beds for Ebola patients has "significantly grown" over the past month, according to the report.
"The raging epidemic that threatened the whole country in September is now down to a few embers scattered across the country," Coons told Business Week. "But we need a new strategy to adapt to conditions on the ground."
Although Coons said some military should leave, he added that it's not time to remove them all just yet. Some troops, he said, should remain "for the rest of the year" to assist the Liberians in the transformation of Ebola treatment centers into community health clinics and local labs.
