Dr. Peiris, who is best known as a leader in the fight against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003, said that flight and trade patterns between Asia and West Africa meant that five cities in the region would be at the front line in preventing Ebola from spreading: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in mainland China; Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory; and Mumbai in India.

Mainland China and Hong Kong have one unusual advantage in dealing with Ebola: their experience with the 2003 outbreak of SARS and their subsequent experience in coping with a series of outbreaks of rare strains of human and avian influenza viruses. Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing have all responded with lavish investments in hospitals equipped with the latest infection control equipment, much of which is made in China, as well.

Hong Kong, for example, only had several dozen hospital beds at the start of SARS that were designed for patients with highly infectious diseases. That total has expanded to 1,400 beds in a construction frenzy over the past decade. Fewer than 100 of those beds are used on any given day for patients with influenza or other infectious diseases. The rest of them are used by people with other ailments but are available on very short notice for advanced infection control.

The special biocontainment hospital rooms in Hong Kong, with one or two beds apiece, were built with features like negative air pressure and outdoor venting in case of another severe outbreak of a highly infectious respiratory ailment — features of little value in dealing with a disease like Ebola that is spread by contact with bodily fluids. But each special room in Hong Kong also has an anteroom that is designed for the safe donning and removal of personal protection equipment, making them well-suited for coping with Ebola, Dr. Peiris said.

While some health care professionals in Spain have criticized a government decision there to allow a Spanish citizen with Ebola to be brought back to Madrid for treatment, Dr. Shih predicted that there would be no serious objections from doctors and nurses in Hong Kong if any Hong Kong citizens needed to be flown back from Africa to Hong Kong for advanced treatment. “I would be surprised if there would be any significant voices saying that here,” Dr. Shih said.

Doctors and nurses in Hong Kong stayed at their posts during SARS, even though dozens became infected and seven died, with bronze busts of them later placed in a memorial in a downtown park. By contrast, Taiwan in particular had a problem during SARS when medical professionals there stopped reporting for work or took other measures in efforts to avoid treating SARS patients.