Ebola Crisis: Guinea Closes Borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia

Guinea closed its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia on Saturday in a bid to halt the spread of an Ebola epidemic that has killed nearly 1,000 people in the three countries this year.

Authorities said the decision was taken primarily to prevent infected people crossing into Guinea, a country where at least 367 people have died of Ebola since March and 18 others are being treated in isolation.

The west African outbreak of Ebola is the worst the world has faced and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it represents an international health emergency that will likely continue for months.

It has put a severe strain on the health systems of affected states and governments have responded with a range of measures including national emergencies declared in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, which confirmed seven cases of Ebola in Lagos.

"We have provisionally closed the frontier between Guinea and Sierra Leone because of all the news that we have received from there recently," health minister Rémy Lamah said, noting Guinea had also closed its border with Liberia.

The measures had been taken in consultation with the two neighbours, Guinea's minister for international co-operation, Moustapha Koutoub Sano, told a news conference. There was no immediate comment from Liberia and Sierra Leone.

While Guinea's official land border crossings with the countries will shut, it will be extremely difficult to prevent people in rural areas crossing its long and porous frontiers.

It was not immediately clear how the closure would impact air travel.

In central Liberia on Saturday, riot police raced to quell a demonstration by crowds who had blocked the country's busiest highway to protest the government's delay in collecting bodies of Ebola victims.

Several bodies had been lying by the roadside for two days in the town of Weala, about 50 miles (75 kilometers) from the capital, Monrovia, residents said.

The UN health agency said on Friday that 961 people have died during the outbreak and 1,779 people have been infected. Authorities in Ghana said on Saturday they were testing blood samples from a man from Burkina Faso who died while being transported to hospital in the Upper East region of the country near the Burkinabe border.

"He had fever and was bleeding from the nose so we are testing him for Ebola because we don't want to take chances," Yaw Manu, medical head at Bawku Presbyterian Hospital, said by telephone. Ghana has previously conducted around 20 Ebola tests, though none has proved positive.

Authorities in Benin also said on Saturday they were testing a patient for Ebola, the second suspected case in the country.