The UN health body said its emergency committee, which includes global medical and policy experts, had declared the deadliest known outbreak of the Ebola virus a “public health emergency of international concern”.
Soldiers in Liberia’s Grand Cape Mount province – one of the worst-affected areas – set up road blocks to limit travel to the capital Monrovia, where lawmakers gathered to ratify a 90-day state of emergency as bodies reportedly lay unburied in the city’s streets.
Two towns in the east of Sierra Leone, Kailahun and Kenema, where put under quarantine on Thursday, a government spokesman said, as nightclubs and entertainment venues across the country were ordered shut.
Public sector doctors in Nigeria suspended a month-long strike with fears rising that the virus is taking hold in Africa’s most populous country.