Charity Doctors without Borders is launching a training programme for medical personnel and support staff who are being sent to countries where ebola is rife in Amsterdam.

The charity is constructing a reproduction field hospital in an old factory, without electricity and running water and will start offering courses in November. A similar training programme already takes place in Brussels.

The charity has found 13 doctors who are willing and sufficiently skilled to go to Africa to try to help combat the epidemic but says it needs 600.

Utrecht University’s teaching hospital has set aside four beds in its special ‘calamity unit’ for international medical staff who have become infected with the disease. The unit has 200 beds but is only used during emergencies.

If ebola patients are brought to the hospital, the unit will be sealed off and no other patients will be admitted, medical manager Loek Leenan told the Volkskrant.