KENYA BANS WEST AFRICAN TRAVELLERS AMID SCRAMBLE TO FIGHT EBOLA

Kenyan health officials help passengers to fill-up medical forms before screening them as they arrive at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on August 14, 2014 in Nairobi. The World Health Organisation classified Kenya as a high-risk area for transmission of the deadly Ebola virus, as Sierra Leone reported that a second leading physician has died of the disease.

Nairobi. Kenya has become the latest country to ban travellers from parts of Ebola-hit west Africa as Nigeria scrambled to stop the deadly disease spreading through the continent’s most populous nation.

Kenyan Health Minister James Macharia said Saturday that the country is closing its borders to travellers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- the nations most affected by the worst-ever Ebola outbreak.

National carrier Kenya Airways also said it would suspend its flights to Freetown and Monrovia when the ban takes effect on Wednesday.

The move comes amid an international appeal to help contain the deadly virus, which has already killed 1,145 people across west Africa this year.

In Spain, where a missionary priest died recently of Ebola after being infected in Liberia, another person was being tested for the disease and was placed in hospital isolation Saturday

Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters Saturday that 12 people have so far tested positive for the virus, including the four who died, while 189 others are under surveillance in Lagos and six in the southeastern town of Enugu.

“As you are aware, the patients under treatment have now be moved to the new 40 bed capacity isolation ward provided by the Lagos state government,” he said.

He said five of the patients have almost fully recovered but added that an experimental drug, nano silver, intended to be administered on the patients was not approved by the National Health Research Ethics Committee.

He also said the first Nigerian to be diagnosed of the ebola virus, a female doctor, had been discharged.

Nigeria has trained 800 volunteers to help in the fight against Ebola following an appeal by authorities in megacity Lagos for volunteers to make up for a shortage of medical personnel because of a six-week doctors’ strike over pay. 

AFP