The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to confirm that Sierra Leone is free of Ebola.
The Ebola outbreak killed almost 4,000 people in Sierra Leone over the past 18 months.
Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Freetown, last night marking 42 days without a single declared case of the disease.
Many gathered around a giant cotton tree in Freetown’s center, where some lit candles in memory of the victims, and others danced with joy.
According to the WHO, a country is considered free of human-to-human transmission once two 21-day incubation periods have passed since the last known case tested negative for a second time.
Photo AP
Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma is due to address crowds in the city later,
On November 6, Ernest Bai Koroma blamed the WHO for delaying Sierra Leone declaring a state of emergency and restricting movement during the Ebola outbreak.
The president said his government did at the time what it could do and did not have the knowledge to fight the disease.
Ernest Bai Koroma said his government had to put up with the delays because international organizations such as the WHO “were the experts”.
Neighboring Liberia was declared Ebola-free in September following 4,800 deaths there.
A handful of cases are still being reported in neighboring Guinea, and Sierra Leone has said it will take heightened security and health screening measures at their shared border.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone recorded their first week with no new cases of Ebola since the outbreak began in March 2014.
The Ebola outbreak has so far killed more than 11,000 people in the three West African countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
New Ebola cases have fallen sharply in 2015, but the WHO has warned that the disease could break out again.
The epidemic is the worst known occurrence of Ebola in history.
More than 500 people believed to have had dangerous contact with an Ebola patient remain under follow-up in Guinea, the WHO said in a report.
The health agency also said several “high-risk” people linked to recent patients in Guinea and Sierra Leone had been lost track of.
Liberia has already been declared free of the disease after 42 days without a new case. It is the second time the country received the declaration, following a flare-up in June.
Sierra Leone released its last known Ebola patients on September 28 and must now wait to be declared free of the disease.
Guinea’s most recent cases were recorded on September 27.
Sierra Leone authorities have imposed a three-day lockdown to curb the spread of Ebola, with the entire population ordered to stay at home.
There is a two-hour exemption on Friday to allow Muslim prayers and a 5-hour window for Christians on Sunday.
Volunteers are going door-to-door, looking for people with signs of the disease and reminding others how to stay safe.
Dozens of new cases are still being reported in Sierra Leone every week.
However, the three West African countries worst affected by Ebola – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – have seen a steep reduction in infections in recent weeks.
This lockdown comes amidst some rare good news. According to official figures from the World Health Organization, there were just 33 new confirmed cases last week – the lowest number since June 2014.
With these falling figures there is danger of growing complacency, the government says.
This is one of the main reasons behind the lockdown – volunteers will remind people how to protect themselves against a virus that is still a real threat.
They will focus their efforts on northern and western areas where some infections still come as a surprise to officials – 16% of cases last week were not known Ebola contacts.
Experts have criticized previous stay-at-homes as too heavy-handed and top-down in their approach. Concerns were raised that some people did not have access to food.
The hope is, a year after the outbreak was declared, such logistical problems have been ironed out and that this measure will bring the country closer to its goal of zero Ebola infections by April 2015 – an ambitious target that is just two weeks away.
Ten US healthcare workers are being evacuated from Sierra Leone after another aid worker back from the West African country had tested positive for Ebola and was being treated in hospital near Washington DC.
The evacuees may have been in contact with the Ebola patient and are being flown back on non-commercial transport.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said none were currently showing Ebola symptoms.
They will stay in voluntary isolation for a 21-day incubation period. If any start to show symptoms they will be taken to one of three hospitals which are equipped to deal with Ebola cases.
On March 13, the CDC sent a team to Sierra Leone to investigate how the healthcare worker became exposed and determine who might have been in contact with the infected person.
The patient is being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
It is the 11th person with the deadly virus to be treated in the US.
More than 10,000 people have died in the current Ebola outbreak.
Sierra Leone Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana has put himself into quarantine after one of his bodyguards died from Ebola.
Samuel Sam-Sumana said he would stay out of contact with others for 21 days as a precaution.
There was optimism the Ebola virus was on the decline in Sierra Leone at the end of 2014 but there has been a recent increase in confirmed cases.
Nearly 10,000 people have died in the outbreak, the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Samuel Sam-Sumana said on February 28 that he had chosen to be quarantined to “lead by example” after the death of his bodyguard, John Koroma, last week.
He told Reuters that he was “very well” and showing no signs of the illness, but said he did not want to “take chances”.
The vice-president’s staff has also been placed under observation.
Samuel Sam-Sumana is Sierra Leone’s first senior government figure to subject himself to a voluntary quarantine.
Officials in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia have pledged to achieve zero Ebola infections within the next two months.
But authorities in Sierra Leone have reinstated some restrictions in the country after a recent spate of news cases.
Of 99 cases recorded in the region in the week beginning February 16, 63 were in Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.
The government in the capital, Freetown, said it was gravely concerned about the new cases.
It said many of them had been connected with maritime activities and checks on ferries and other vessels had been increased in response.
President Ernest Bai Koroma has also ordered public transport operators to reduce capacity by 25% to limit physical contact between passengers.
In all, more than 23,500 cases have been reported in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since the world’s worst outbreak began in December 2013.
According to World Health Organization officials, there has been a “turning point” in the Ebola crisis, with cases falling in the three affected countries.
Just 8 cases were detected in Liberia in the last week down from a peak of 500-a-week in September. Guinea and Sierra Leone have also seen falls.
The WHO said the figures were the “most promising” since the outbreak started.
However, the agency continues to urge caution, and to highlight the need to find those who had contact with Ebola patients.
The largest outbreak of Ebola in human history has infected 21,724 people and killed 8,641 – largely in just three countries, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
All are now showing falls in weekly cases:
Cases in Liberia stand at 8-per-week down from a peak of 509
Cases in Guinea stand at 20 per week down from a peak of 292
Cases in Sierra Leone stand at 117-per-week down from a peak of 748
There are now some days in Liberia where no cases are reported at all.
A single case is enough to start an entire outbreak so identifying everyone who comes into contact with Ebola is vital.
Yet the latest WHO situation report says the number of people being traced “remains lower than expected in many districts”.
Western Sierra Leone remains another problem.
Of the 145 cases reported across all affected countries last week, more than 100 were in that region, which includes the capital Freetown.
A number of bodies have been discovered by health officials in Kono, a remote diamond-mining area of Sierra Leone, raising fears that the scale of the Ebola outbreak may have been underreported.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said they uncovered a “grim scene” in the eastern district of Kono.
A WHO response team had been sent to Kono to investigate a sharp rise in Ebola cases.
Ebola has killed 6,346 people in West Africa, with more than 17,800 infected.
Sierra Leone has the highest number of Ebola cases in West Africa, with 7,897 cases since the beginning of the outbreak.
The WHO said in a statement on December 10 that over 11 days in Kono, “two teams buried 87 bodies, including a nurse, an ambulance driver, and a janitor drafted into removing bodies as they piled up”.
Bodies of Ebola victims are highly infectious and safe burials are crucial in preventing the transmission of the disease.
The response team also found 25 people who had died in the past five days piled up in a cordoned section of the local hospital.
Dr. Olu Olushayo, a member of the WHO’s Ebola response team, said: “Our team met heroic doctors and nurses at their wits’ end, exhausted burial teams and lab techs, all doing the best they could but they simply ran out of resources and were overrun with gravely ill people.”
Health officials are worried that many of the Ebola cases in Kono have gone unreported until now.
“We are only seeing the ears of the hippo,” said Dr Amara Jambai, Sierra Leone’s Director of Disease Prevention and Control.
The district of more than 350,000 inhabitants had reported 119 cases up to December 9.
Authorities in Sierra Leone have decided to put Kono district on “lockdown” from 10 to 23 December to try and contain the outbreak.
During the lockdown, no-one will be able to enter or leave the district but they can move around freely within it.
Health workers treating Ebola patients at a clinic in Sierra Leone have gone on strike, protesting about the government’s failure to pay an agreed weekly $100 “hazard payment”.
The staff includes more than 400 nurses, porters and cleaners.
The clinic, in Bandajuma near Bo, is the only Ebola treatment centre in southern Sierra Leone.
In Mali, a nurse and the patient he was treating earlier became the second and third people to die from Ebola there.
Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Ebola outbreak a global health emergency.
The Bandajuma clinic is run by medical charity MSF, which said it would be forced to close the facility if the strike continued.
About 60 patients had been left unattended because of the strike at the clinic in Bandajuma.
There are international staff at the clinic but they are unable to keep the clinic open on their own.
The staff, who are protesting outside the clinic, say the government agreed to the “hazard payments” when the facility was established but has failed to make any payments since September.
The money was due to be paid in addition to salaries the staff receive from MSF.
Earlier, the Malian authorities confirmed that a nurse and the patient he was treating at a clinic in Bamako had died.
The patient, a traditional Muslim healer in his 50s, had recently arrived from Guinea.
The current outbreak is the deadliest since Ebola was discovered in 1976.
Ebola was first identified in Guinea in March, before it spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone. The WHO says there are now more than 13,240 confirmed, suspected and probable cases, almost all in these countries.
Leading charity Save the Children has warned that a rate of five new Ebola cases an hour in Sierra Leone means healthcare demands are far outstripping supply.
Save the Children said there were 765 new cases of Ebola reported in Sierra Leone last week, while there are only 327 beds in the country.
Experts and politicians are set to meet in London to debate a global response to the Ebola outbreak crisis.
It is the world’s worst outbreak of the virus, killing 3,338 people so far.
There have been 7,178 confirmed cases, with Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea suffering the most.
Save the Children says Ebola is spreading across Sierra Leone at a “terrifying rate”, with the number of new cases being recorded doubling every few weeks.
It said that even as health authorities got on top of the outbreak in one area, it spread to another.
Ebola is spreading across Sierra Leone at a terrifying rate, with the number of new cases being recorded doubling every few weeks
The scale of the disease is also “massively unreported” according to the charity, because “untold numbers of children are dying anonymously at home or in the streets”.
Earlier this month, Britain said it would build facilities for 700 new beds in Sierra Leone but the first of these will not be ready for weeks, and the rest may take months.
Save the Children said that unless the international community radically stepped up its response, people would continue to die at home and risk infecting their family and the local community.
“We are facing the frightening prospect of an epidemic which is spreading like wildfire across Sierra Leone, with the number of new cases doubling every three weeks,” said Rob MacGillivray, Save the Children’s country director in Sierra Leone.
Safety trials for two experimental vaccines are under way in the UK and US, the WHO said on Wednesday, and will be expanded to 10 sites in Africa, Europe and North America in the coming weeks.
It said it expected to begin small-scale use of the experimental vaccines in West Africa early next year.
The Ebola Donors Conference in London on October 2 is being hosted by the UK and Sierra Leone governments. Its main agenda is to discuss what the global community can do to provide an effective international response to the epidemic.
It will be chaired by UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who said he hoped it would “raise even greater awareness of the disease and what is needed to contain it, encourage ambitious pledges and show our solidarity with Sierra Leone and the region.”
According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has passed 3,000.
The latest figures indicate that more than 6,500 people are believed to have been infected in the region.
Liberia is the worst affected country, having recorded around 1,830 deaths linked to the latest outbreak.
The Ebola outbreak is the world’s most deadly and President Barack Obama has called it a “threat to global security”.
Some studies have warned that the numbers of infected could rise to more than 20,000 by early November.
The WHO report said two new areas, in Guinea and Liberia, have recorded their first confirmed cases of Ebola in the last seven days.
It also highlights the risk of infection for health workers trying to stem the outbreak.
The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has passed 3,000
It says 375 workers are known to have been infected, and that 211 have so far died from the virus.
The deaths and sickness have made it even more difficult for the already weak healthcare systems in the affected countries to cope with the outbreak.
There is a severe shortage of hospital beds, especially in Liberia.
The US is sending some 3,000 troops to help Liberia tackle the disease, and set up emergency medical facilities.
Sierra Leone last weekend enforced a three-day lockdown in an attempt to quell the outbreak in the country.
During the curfew more than a million households were surveyed and 130 new cases discovered, the authorities say.
On September 24, Sierra Leone extended the quarantine area to three new districts, meaning more than a third of the country’s six million people cannot move freely.
Some 600 people have died in Sierra Leone and a similar number in Guinea, where the outbreak was first confirmed in March.
Nigeria and Senegal, two other West Africa countries that have also been affected by the Ebola outbreak, have not recorded any new cases or deaths in the last few weeks, the latest WHO report says.
Sierra Leone has widened the Ebola quarantine to include another one million people in an attempt to curb the spread of the disease.
President Ernest Bai Koroma has announced that northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali, and Moyamba in the south will be sealed off immediately.
Nearly 600 people have died of the virus in Sierra Leone where two eastern districts are already blockaded.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has said the world needs to act faster to halt the West Africa Ebola outbreak.
“There is still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be,” Barack Obama told a high-level United Nations meeting on Ebola.
2,917 people have died in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, with Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea worst affected, according to new figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO).
President Ernest Bai Koroma’s announcement follows a three-day nationwide lockdown that ended on Sunday night.
Sierra Leone has widened the Ebola quarantine to include another one million people in an attempt to curb the spread of the disease (photo AP)
Two eastern districts have been isolated since the beginning of August and the extension of the indefinite quarantine means more than a third of Sierra Leone’s 6.1 million population now finds itself unable to move freely.
During Sierra Leone’s three-day curfew, more than a million households were surveyed and 130 new cases discovered, the authorities say.
President Ernest Bai Koroma said the move had been a success but had exposed “areas of greater challenges”, which was why other areas were being quarantined.
Only people delivering essential services can enter and circulate within areas under quarantine.
In a televised address, the president acknowledged that the blockade would “pose great difficulties” for people.
“[But] the life of everyone and the survival of our country take precedence over these difficulties,” he said.
According to WHO, the situation nationally in Sierra Leone continues to deteriorate with a sharp increase in the number of newly reported cases in the capital, Freetown, and its neighboring districts of Port Loko, Bombali, and Moyamba, which are now under quarantine.
The WHO said despite efforts to deploy more health workers and open new Ebola treatment centers in the worst-affected countries, there was still a significant lack of beds in Sierra Leone and Liberia, with more than 2,000 needed.
The situation in Guinea had appeared to be stabilizing, but with up to 100 new confirmed cases reported in each of the past five weeks, it was still of grave concern, it said.
Sierra Leone’s three-day curfew aimed at containing the Ebola outbreak has been declared a success by authorities.
They say more than a million households were surveyed and 130 new cases discovered.
Sierra Leone is one of the countries worst affected by the outbreak, with nearly 600 of the almost 2,800 total deaths recorded so far.
Some health groups have criticized the lockdown, saying it would destroy trust between patients and doctors.
Nearly all of the deaths in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak have been recorded in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the situations in Senegal and Nigeria have now been “pretty much contained”.
Sierra Leone’s three-day curfew aimed at containing the Ebola outbreak has been declared a success by authorities
According to the UN agency, the number of overall deaths from Ebola has risen to 2,793 and the disease remains “a public health emergency of international concern”.
The deadly virus is transmitted through sweat, blood and saliva, and there is no proven cure.
About 100 dead bodies believed to be of Ebola victims, which could otherwise have been secretly buried without homes being quarantined, were retrieved and buried, officials say.
Bodies of Ebola victims are highly contagious and their swift burial is considered key to containing the disease.
Many people have been reluctant to seek treatment for Ebola, on the basis that there is no cure, even though about half of those infected have recovered with the help of rest and rehydration.
Ambulances are in short supply, as are the isolation wards to look after patients, with almost all Ebola treatment centers confined to the east of the country.
There are also too few teams available to bury the dead, partly because of the social stigma attached to the role.
The curfew in Sierra Leone came into force on September 19, with the country’s six million inhabitants confined to their homes.
Around 30,000 medical volunteers travelled to affected neighborhoods to find patients and distribute soap.
A three-day lockdown has come into effect in Sierra Leone in a bid to stop the spread of the Ebola virus.
The aim of the move is to keep people confined to their homes while health workers isolate new cases and prevent Ebola from spreading further.
Critics say the lockdown will destroy trust between doctors and the public.
Sierra Leona is one of the countries worst hit by West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,600 people.
The UN Security Council on Thursday declared the outbreak a “threat to international peace and security”.
The Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling on states to provide more resources to combat it.
A three-day lockdown has come into effect in Sierra Leone in a bid to stop the spread of the Ebola virus (photo Reuters)
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been strongly critical of the lockdown, arguing that ultimately it will help spread the disease.
MSF, whose staff is helping to tackle the outbreak, said in a statement this month that quarantines and lockdowns “end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers”.
“This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further.”
But the authorities insist that the measure “will minimize the spread of the virus”, and that thousands of officials would be deployed to make sure residents stayed indoors.
Volunteers will go door-to-door to test people for the virus and take infected people to treatment centers.
The Ebola virus infects humans through close contact with infected animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope.
It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.
Sierra Leone has announced a four-day lockdown to try to tackle the Ebola disease.
According to a senior official, from 18 to 21 September people will not be allowed to leave their homes.
The aim of the move is to allow health workers to isolate new cases to prevent the disease from spreading further.
The Ebola outbreak has killed about 2,100 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria in recent months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on September 5 that health workers could be given vaccines as from November, when safety tests are completed.
Sierra Leone has announced a four-day lockdown to try to tackle the Ebola disease
More than 20 health workers have lost their lives to the virus in Sierra Leone since the start of the outbreak in March.
Last month Liberia sealed off a large slum in the capital, Monrovia, for more than a week in an attempt to contain the virus.
The disease infects humans through close contact with infected animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope.
It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.
A presidential adviser described the measure as aggressive but argued that it was necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola.
Meanwhile, officials in Nigeria have decided to reopen schools in the country from September 22.
They were closed as a precaution to prevent the spread of the virus.
On September 5, the WHO announced that the blood of patients who recovered from Ebola should be used to treat others.
People produce antibodies in the blood in an attempt to fight off an Ebola infection. The antibodies may be able to help a sick patient’s immune system if they are transferred.
However, large scale data on the effectiveness of the therapy is lacking.
Sierra Leone’s parliament voted to pass a new amendment to its health act, imposing possible jail time for anyone caught hiding an Ebola patient.
Hiding an Ebola patient is a practice the World Health Organization (WHO) believes has contributed to a major underestimation of the current outbreak.
Those caught face up to two years in prison, the justice minister said. The measure still needs to be approved by the president.
Earlier, Ivory Coast closed its land borders to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus on to its territory.
The WHO says the measures – taken by other countries as well – are counterproductive.
So far 1,427 people have died – more than in any other Ebola outbreak.
Sierra Leone’s parliament voted to pass a new amendment to its health act, imposing possible jail time for anyone caught hiding an Ebola patient
The number of cases now stands at 2,615. The speed and extent of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa are “unprecedented”, according to the WHO.
Ivory Coast, the largest economy in francophone West Africa, had previously imposed a ban on flights to and from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
“Faced with new outbreak sites and the reactivation of old sites… the Ivorian government decides to close its land borders with sister republics Guinea and Liberia,” it said in a statement on Friday.
Gabon, Senegal, Cameroon and South Africa have taken similar measures.
The WHO says travel bans do not work, and that what is needed is more doctors and officials to help trace those infected with Ebola, as well as more mobile laboratories.
On Friday, the WHO’s Dr. Keiji Fukuda expressed concern over so-called “shadow zones”, areas which cannot be reached and where patients are not being detected.
The organization confirmed 142 new cases of the disease had been reported since 19 August, as well as 77 deaths.
Speaking at a news conference in the Liberian capital Monrovia, Dr. Keiji Fukuda said combating the disease would take “several months of hard work”.
“We haven’t seen an Ebola outbreak covering towns, rural areas so quickly and over such a wide area,” he added.
Ebola has no known cure but some affected people have recovered after being given an experimental drug, ZMapp. However, supplies are now exhausted.
Why Ebola outbreak is underestimated?
Many families keep sick people at home, as there is no cure
Many health centers have closed because medical staff have fled
In Liberia, treatment centers are overwhelmed
The existence of “shadow-zones”, areas where there are reports of Ebola but which cannot be accessed because of local resistance or lack of staff
Kenya is closing its borders to travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in response to the deadly Ebola outbreak.
The health secretary said Kenyans and medical workers flying in from those states would still be allowed in.
Kenyan Airways says it will stop flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone when the ban comes in on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says Kenya is at “high risk” from Ebola because it is a major transport hub.
The epidemic began in Guinea in February and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
On Friday, the death toll rose to 1,145 after the WHO said 76 new deaths had been reported in the two days to August 13. There have been 2,127 cases reported in total.
Earlier, Kenya’s health ministry said four suspected cases of Ebola in the country had tested negative for the virus.
The cases had involved a Liberian national and two Nigerians who had recently travelled to Kenya as well as a Zimbabwean.
Kenya is closing its borders to travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in response to the deadly Ebola outbreak
Kenya Airways said it had decided to cancel flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone’s capitals after advice from Kenya’s government.
It said all passengers booked on the suspended flights would get a full refund.
Kenya Airways said its flights to Nigeria were not affected by the suspension.
Announcing the government’s decision, Kenyan Health Minister James Macharia said it was “in the interest of public health”.
James Macharia warned that Kenyans and health workers who had returned from the three west African states would face “strict checks” and would be quarantined if necessary.
On Friday, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said the Ebola outbreak would take at least six months to bring under control.
MSF President Joanne Liu said the situation was “deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to”.
The WHO also admitted that the scale of the outbreak appeared to be “vastly underestimated” and said “extraordinary measures” were needed to contain it.
The Ebola disease is transmitted by direct contact with the body fluids of a person who is infected.
Initial flu-like symptoms can lead to external hemorrhaging from areas such as eyes and gums, and internal bleeding which can lead to organ failure.
The WHO says the risk of transmission of Ebola during air travel remains low.
A second senior doctor in Sierra Leone, Modupeh Cole, was confirmed dead from Ebola on Wednesday as West Africa anxiously awaited the arrival of experimental drugs to tackle the deadliest-ever outbreak of the virus.
Sierre Leone‘s chief medical officer Brima Kargbo said Modupeh Cole, a senior physician in the capital Freetown, had been “instrumental in the fight against the Ebola virus”.
Modupeh Cole’s death came only a fortnight after the country’s only virologist and leading Ebola expert, Umar Khan, succumbed to the tropical disease.
A second senior doctor in Sierra Leone was confirmed dead from Ebola (photo Reuters)
Another of the worst-hit countries, Liberia, is scrambling to save two of its own infected doctors and hopes an experimental serum from the US will arrive in time.
The presidency said Tuesday it had received approval from the FDA for the use of a barely-tested ZMapp treatment that has shown positive early results.
The two infected doctors have given their written consent to try the drug, which will be delivered to the country within 48 hours. A third doctor has already died from the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Tuesday it was ethical to try largely untested treatments “in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak”.
The company behind ZMapp said it had sent all its available supplies to the region following an outcry over the fact it had so far only been used on Westerners, but supplies are extremely limited.
Guinea has decided to close its borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone to contain the spread of Ebola, which has killed 959 people in the three countries.
The latest Ebola outbreak is thought to have begun in Guinea, but Liberia and Sierra Leone are currently facing the highest frequency of new cases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday the spread of the virus was a global health emergency.
The Ebola virus is transmitted between humans through bodily fluids.
Animals such as fruit bats carry the virus, which can be transmitted to humans through contact with blood or consumption of bushmeat.
In recent weeks, countries around the world have advised their citizens not to travel to the affected countries.
The infections have spread to Nigeria, which has recorded two deaths and several more cases.
The total number of cases in the current outbreak stands at 1,779, the WHO said on Friday.
The most recent figures from August 5 and 6 showed 68 new cases and 29 deaths.
Guinea has decided to close its borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone to contain the spread of Ebola
They included 26 new cases in Sierra Leone and 38 in Liberia, but no new cases in Guinea, where the outbreak began.
Guinea said it was closing its borders in order to stop people from entering the country.
“We have provisionally closed the frontier between Guinea and Sierra Leone because of all the news that we have received from there recently,” Health Minister Remy Lamah told a news conference.
Remy Lamah added that Guinea had also closed its border with Liberia.
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have already declared varying levels of emergency over the spread of the virus.
The most intense outbreak in Guinea was located in the region along the border with Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The WHO had said the worst-affected area, which straddles the borders between the three countries, would be isolated and treated as a “unified zone”.
It is not clear what effect Guinea’s announcement will have on the strategy.
The WHO said a co-ordinated response was essential.
The Ebola virus was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976.
Experts say the current outbreak is unusual because it started in Guinea, which has never before been affected, and is spreading to urban areas.
A Saudi man who was suspected of contracting Ebola disease in Sierra Leone has died at a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s health ministry says.
If confirmed, this would be the first Ebola-related death outside Africa in an outbreak that has killed more than 900 people this year.
The man recently visited Sierra Leone, one of four countries in the outbreak.
World Health Organization (WHO) experts are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss a response to the outbreak.
The two-day meeting will decide whether to declare a global health emergency.
Ebola, a viral hemorrhagic fever, is one of the deadliest diseases known to humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90%.
The Ebola virus spreads by contact with infected blood and bodily fluids
A WHO statement on Wednesday said 932 patients had died of the disease in West Africa so far, with most of the latest fatalities reported in Liberia.
Concern has also been growing over a number of new cases in Nigeria, the region’s most populous nation. On Wednesday, a nurse who treated an Ebola patient became the second person to die of the disease there.
Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu described the outbreak as a national emergency, adding that “everyone in the world is at risk” because of air travel.
The Saudi man who was suspected of contracting the disease died of cardiac arrest, according to the website of the country’s health ministry.
The 40-year-old is said to have returned from a recent business trip to Sierra Leone.
The ministry’s website said he was being tested for Ebola, but did not say if the tests had concluded that he had the disease.
The website said the man had been treated for Ebola-like symptoms in an isolation ward and would be buried according to Islamic tradition, while following precautions set out by world health authorities.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas to Muslims from several West African countries, amid concerns that visiting pilgrims could spread the disease.
Meanwhile, two US aid workers – Dr. Kent Brantly and Nurse Nancy Writebol – who contracted Ebola in Liberia appear to be improving after receiving an unapproved medicine ahead of their evacuation back to the US.
t is not clear if the ZMapp drug, which has only been tested on monkeys, can be credited with their improvement.
Leading infectious disease experts have called for experimental treatments to be offered more widely.
The meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee is focusing solely on how to respond to the Ebola outbreak.
If a public health emergency is declared, it could involve detailed plans to identify, isolate and treat cases, as well as impose travel restrictions on affected areas.
Liberia is closing down all schools across the country to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.
Some communities would be placed under quarantine as well, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.
Non-essential government workers will be sent home for 20 days and the army deployed to enforce the measures.
The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.
Liberia is closing down all schools across the country to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus (photo AFP)
Treatment facilities have reportedly been overwhelmed in the Liberian capital Monrovia.
Some wards have already filled up, forcing health workers to treat some patients at their homes.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said that Friday, August 1, would be a non-working day in Liberia to allow for the disinfection of all public facilities.
“All non-essential staff – to be determined by the heads of ministries and agencies – are to be placed on 30 days’ compulsory leave” she added.
The US humanitarian organization Peace Corps said it was withdrawing 340 volunteers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea because of the spread of the virus.
Ebola kills up to 90% of those infected, but patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early treatment.
The virus spreads through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.
The Ebola outbreak – the world’s deadliest to date – was first reported in Guinea in February. It then spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
West African airline ASKY has stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone amid growing concern about the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.
ASKY Airlines said it took the decision to keep “its passengers and staff safe during this unsettling time”.
The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.
In Sierra Leone, the doctor who led the fight against Ebola, Sheik Umar Khan, has died of the disease.
Government officials hailed Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, 39, as a “national hero”.
ASKY has stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone amid growing concern about the spread of the deadly Ebola virus (photo Flickr)
The government disclosed last week that he was being treated for Ebola and had been quarantined.
His death follows that of prominent Liberian doctor Samuel Brisbane at the weekend.
Ebola kills up to 90% of those infected, but patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early treatment.
It spreads through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.
The outbreak – the world’s deadliest to date – was first reported in Guinea in February. It then spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
ASKY is the second airline, after Nigeria’s largest airline, Arik Air, to ban flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
It had not halted flights to Guinea, but passengers departing from there would be “screened for signs of the virus”, ASKY said.
Last week, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, reported its first case – that of Liberian finance ministry official Patrick Sawyer who flew to the main city, Lagos, in an ASKY flight.
Liberia has deployed police officers at the international airport in the capital, Monrovia, to ensure passengers are screened for symptoms of Ebola.
“We have a presence of the police at the airport to enforce what we’re doing,” said Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the Liberia Airport Authority.
“So if you have a flight and you are not complying with the rules, we will not allow you to board.”
Most border crossings in Liberia have been closed to contain the outbreak and affected communities are being quarantined.
Liberia has also suspended all football activities in an effort to control the spread of Ebola.
In a statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that 1,201 Ebola cases had been reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Of the 672 deaths, the highest number was in Guinea with 319, followed by Liberia with 249 and Sierra Leone with 224, it said.
Saudatu Koroma, a Sierra Leone woman who fled hospital after testing positive for the Ebola virus, has died after turning herself in.
Her family had forcibly removed her from a public hospital on Thursday.
Saudatu Koroma’s is the first case of Ebola to be confirmed in the country’s capital Freetown, where there are no facilities to treat the virus.
Since February, more than 660 people have died of Ebola in West Africa – the world’s deadliest outbreak to date.
Nigeria has put all its entry points on red alert after confirming the death there of a Liberian man who was carrying the highly contagious virus.
The man died after arriving at Lagos airport on Tuesday, in the first Ebola case in Africa’s most populous country.
The outbreak began in southern Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Since February, more than 660 people have died of Ebola in West Africa (photo AP)
Reports on Saturday said that a prominent Liberian doctor, Samuel Brisbane, had died after a three-week battle with the virus.
And later it emerged that a US doctor working with Ebola patients, Kent Brantly, was being treated for the virus in a hospital in the capital Monrovia.
The virus, which kills up to 90% of those infected, spreads through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.
Patients have a better chance of survival if they receive treatment early.
Saudatu Koroma was the first registered Ebola case in the capital Freetown.
Both she and her parents – who are suspected of having the virus – had been taken to Ebola treatment centers in the east of the country..
Saudatu Koroma had been one of dozens of people who tested positive but were unaccounted for.
The Ebola cases in Sierra Leone are centered in the country’s eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun, just over the border from the Guekedou region of Guinea where the outbreak started.
Police said thousands of people joined a street protest in Kenema on Friday over the government’s handling of the outbreak.
Earlier this week, it was announced that the doctor leading Sierra Leone’s fight against Ebola was being treated for the virus.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization said that 219 people had died of Ebola in Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said that all other passengers on board the flight with the infected man had been traced and were being monitored.
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