Ebola: WHO in emergency talks on travel restrictions

Africa Oct - 22 - 2014 , 10:24 3 minutes read

The World Health Organisation is set to hold emergency talks to discuss the Ebola epidemic.

The meeting will assess the efforts so far to control the virus, which continues to spread in the worst affected countries in West Africa.

New rules in the US require travellers from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to arrive at one of five airports.

Meanwhile a curfew has been imposed in a town in Sierra Leone after two people were shot dead in riots on Tuesday.

The current outbreak of the virus has already killed more than 4,500 people - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Enhanced screening

The WHO has faced criticism it reacted too slowly to the spread of the disease.

In a meeting on Wednesday, its emergency committee will look closely at whether screening measures at borders are working.

First batches of an experimental vaccine against Ebola are also due to arrive in Switzerland, reports the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.

However, a fully tested and approved vaccine is not expected to become available for months or possibly years, our correspondent adds.

Meanwhile, air passengers arriving in the US from the three worst affected countries must now travel via O'Hare in Chicago, JFK, Newark, Washington's Dulles or Atlanta, where they will undergo enhanced screening.

They will have their temperatures checked as part of other protocols, despite experts warning such moves are unlikely to have an impact.

The new security measures come as public concern grows in the US, where three people have been infected and one person has died from the virus.

The precautions stop short of the travel ban sought by some US Congress members.

US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said authorities were working closely with airlines to introduce the latest US restrictions with "minimal travel disruption".

There are no direct scheduled flights to the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea.

But Mr Johnson said officials were working to indentify anyone who might have been to one of these countries in the past 21 days.

Hospital criticised

The riots in Sierra Leone's town of Koidu began as protests against attempts to place an elderly woman, said to be 90 years old, under quarantine.

The BBC's Umaru Fofana in the capital, Freetown, says the woman has now died but it is not clear whether she actually had Ebola.

Meanwhile, the family of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died from Ebola in the US earlier this month, say hospital officials have refused to release information about his treatment, the Associated Press reports.

It comes amid claims that staff at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital mishandled the case.

"None of the procedures were discussed with the family,'' his nephew, Josephus Weeks, told AP.

In other developments:

NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo - who contracted Ebola in West Africa - has been declared free of the virus and will leave hospital in the US state of Nebraska on Wednesday
UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening is in Sierra Leone to assess the impact of the government's $200m (£125m) aid package.

credit: BBC

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