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Nairobi – Travellers from Ebola stricken West Africa have been banned from entering Kenya on Saturday as the east African nation puts into place measures to stop the disease from spreading.

Health Minister James Macharia said Kenya is closing its borders to travellers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — the countries most affected by the worst-ever Ebola outbreak.

Kenya Airways the national carrier also said it would suspend its flights to Freetown and Monrovia when the ban takes effect on Wednesday.

So far 1145 people in West Africa have died from ebola.

800 volunteers have been trained in Nigeria to assist in combating ebola.

Authorities in megacity Lagos, where four people have died from the virus, last week appealed for volunteers to make up for a shortage of medical personnel because of a six-week doctors’ strike over pay.

“People have heeded our call for service,” said Hakeem Bello, a spokesman for Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola.

“We have trained some 800 volunteers in the area of contact tracing, sensitisation and treatment of the Ebola disease,” he added.

Health experts have highlighted that ebola is spiralling out of control with the World Health Organization declaring the epidemic an international health emergency and appealing for global aid.

The disease erupted in the forested zone straddling the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia earlier this year and spread to Nigeria last month.

Deployment of volunteers in Nigeria has seen them being sent to 57 states but much more are needed.
Lagos’ state government has stepped up a media campaign to raise awareness of how to prevent the spread of the disease, including radio and television advertisements and public health announcements.

Nigerian doctors have been on a nationwide strike since July 1 to demand a pay rise and better working conditions.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, on Friday warned Ebola is spreading faster than authorities can handle and could take six months to bring under control.

Draconian travel restrictions have been imposed across west Africa and several airlines have cancelled flights to affected countries in a bid to stop it spreading beyond the region.

Ebola is now in Scotland where Scottish health officials on Saturday confirmed that a woman, reportedly from Sierra Leone, who fell ill at a deportation facility south of Glasgow has tested negative for the virus.

Nigeria has also withdrawn its athletes from the Youth Olympics in the Chinese city of Nanjing as a result of the outbreak, state media reported as the games opened on Saturday.

Athletes from Ebola hit countries have been barred from sports by the International Olympic Committee.

It is important to note that Ebola is spread by contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids, such as sweat and blood, and no cure or vaccine is currently available.

Evidence from practice has revealed that the days of a victim’s life can be grim, characterised by agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as “bleeding out”, as vital organs break down.

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