More from
Reuters where we now hear Highly contagious, Ebola has also spread to Nigeria and Senegal, which reported its first confirmed case on Friday, a Guinean student who was lost to authorities in his own country while under surveillance.
"His brother came from Sierra Leone where he was infected and has died. Shortly afterwards, this student left for Senegal," said Dr. Rafi Diallo, spokesman for the Guinean health ministry.
The student's sister and mother have died from Ebola, Guinean health ministry sources said.
A resident in the suburb of the Senegalese capital Dakar, where the student resided, said on Saturday that a team of health ministry officials wearing white protective suits and masks came to spray disinfectant at his home and a local grocer's shop.
Many Dakar residents worry that the student could have spread the highly contagious virus in the three weeks since he was last reported in Guinea.
In Nigeria, where an infected traveller collapsed after arriving the Lagos airport, there have so far been 19 suspected, probable and confirmed cases and seven deaths.
"To avoid a situation like Nigeria, they need to be able to follow hundreds of contacts," said epidemiologist Jorge Castilla-Echenique of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department in Dakar. "Whatever they do, there will probably be a second set of sick people as this guy has been here for some time."
Senegal has closed its land border with Guinea and halted flights to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, defying advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) that there is no need for travel restrictions.
A note from the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization sent to health ministries on Aug. 29 said: "Lives are being unnecessarily lost because health care workers cannot travel to the affected countries, and delivery of life saving equipment and supplies is being delayed."
The World Food Programme said it needs to raise $70 million to feed 1.3 million people at risk from shortages in the Ebola-quarantined areas in West Africa, with the agency's resources already stretched by several major humanitarian crises.
Democratic Republic of
Congo declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province last week that has killed at least 13 people. But the outbreak, which occurred near the Ebola River region where the virus was first detected in 1976, appears to be unrelated to the West Africa outbreak.
