Senegal shuts border with Guinea to keep out Ebola virus
PUBLISHED : Monday, 31 March, 2014, 5:57am
UPDATED : Monday, 31 March, 2014, 7:37am
Reuters in Dakar
A box with the tag NGO Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders-MSF) is seen in the zone where people suspected of suffering of Ebola fever are isolated at the Donka hospital where several cases where reported in Conakry. Photo: AFP
Senegal has closed its land border with Guinea to try to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus, which Guinean authorities suspect of killing 70 people in the deadliest outbreak in seven years.
The discovery of 11 people suspected to have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia in recent days has stirred concern that one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to man could spread in a poor corner of West Africa, where health systems are ill-equipped to cope.
Senegal's interior ministry said it had closed the land border with Guinea in the southern region of Kolda and the southeastern region of Kedougou.
Senegalese authorities said on Friday they would introduce sanitary checks on flights between Dakar and the Guinean capital Conakry, where eight cases of Ebola have been confirmed, including one death. West African foreign ministers said at a conference in Ivory Coast last week that the outbreak was a "threat to regional security".
There is no vaccine and no known cure for the disease, which can cause vomiting, diarrhoea and external bleeding that carry the virus outside victims' bodies and threaten to infect anyone who touches them.
Ebola has killed more than 1,500 people since it was first recorded in 1976 in Congo, but this is the first fatal outbreak in West Africa.
