Lagos State seeking volunteers as battle to contain Ebola intensifies

The battle to contain the deadly Ebola outbreak continued on Sunday, after Lagos State health officials appealed for volunteers to help halt the spread of the virus but Guinea went back on a statement it was shutting its land borders with two of its neighbours.

A day after the World Health Organization declared the epidemic an international health emergency, countries as far afield as India were scrambling to impose measures to prevent contagion of the virus which has claimed almost 1,000 lives. The UN health agency stopped short of calling for global travel restrictions, but some countries on Saturday began imposing bans. Zambia announced that it was denying entry to citizens from countries hit by the virus, while Chad suspended all flights from Nigeria.

Nigeria along with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are the hardest hit countries by the epidemic, which the WHO has called the worst in four decades.

Authorities in Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, said they needed volunteers because of a shortage of medical personnel. "I won't lie about that," Lagos State health commissioner Jide Idris said on television, as the city, home to some 20 million people confirmed nine cases of Ebola, including two deaths.

In Guinea, the government had announced that it was temporarily closing its land borders with neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone but later went back on its statement arguing that it wanted to avoid clandestine border crossings.

"We're not talking about closing the borders between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but rather of coercive measures to better control cross-border movements", notably by people who risk carrying the virus, said government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara in a telephone interview with AFP late Saturday.

Sierra Leone meanwhile deployed some 1,500 troops to enforce quarantine measures in two eastern districts where most of the country's confirmed cases had stemmed from.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan warned against spreading false information about Ebola "which can lead to mass hysteria, panic and misdirection, including unverified suggestions about prevention, treatment, cure and spread of the virus."

Local media reported on Saturday that two people had died in Nigeria's central Plateau state and about 20 have been hospitalised after they ingested an excessive amount of salt which they believed could prevent Ebola.

Nigeria's Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu dismissed the salt and water solution as "total rubbish".