FREETOWN – African nations will send more than 1,000 health workers to Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the head of the African Union Commission said Thursday.

“Several African member states have pledged to send in a number of health workers to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, including DR Congo, which will send around 1,000 workers in three groups,” Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told reporters in Freetown.

“Though we are awaiting other responses, East Africa has responded and pledged more than 600 health workers,” she added.

The medical personnel will receive training in their own countries first, she said.

Dlamini-Zuma, on a trip to the three countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — said the African Union bloc was responding to an urgent need for well-trained medical staff to help fight the worst-ever outbreak of the disease.

“We’ve … noticed that the international community is responding more to infrastructure and not much to health workers. And infrastructure is critical to have treatment centers and hospitals, but if that infrastructure does not have the staff, it will go to waste,” she said.

Nearly 4,900 people have died from Ebola in West Africa, with almost 10,000 infected, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

Health workers have been particularly affected, with 244 deaths out of 443 cases across the affected countries.