(Reuters) – Liberia shut a major hospital in the capital Monrovia on Wednesday after a Spanish priest and six other staff contracted Ebola, as the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease hit 932 in West Africa.
The outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever has overwhelmed rudimentary healthcare systems and prompted the deployment of troops to quarantine the worst-hit areas in the remote border region of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 45 new deaths in the three days to Aug. 4, and its experts began an emergency meeting in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss whether the outbreak constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and to discuss new measures to contain the outbreak.
International alarm at the spread of the disease increased when a U.S. citizen died in Nigeria late last month after flying there from Liberia. The health minister said on Wednesday that a Nigerian nurse who had treated the deceased Patrick Sawyer had herself died of Ebola, and five other people were being treated in an isolation ward in Lagos, Africa’s largest city.
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