The death toll of the Ebola epidemic has neared 1,000 as fears rose that the disease is now taking hold in Africa's most populous nation of Nigeria after a second death among seven confirmed cases in Lagos.
The spread of the disease comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) met in an emergency session in Geneva to decide whether to declare an international crisis.
The latest official toll across west Africa hit 932 deaths since the start of the year, it said yesterday, with 1,711 confirmed cases, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The death of a nurse in Lagos, a mega city of more than 20 million, came as 45 deaths were confirmed across west Africa between Saturday and Monday, with aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, saying the terrifying tropical disease is out of control.
In Liberia's capital Monrovia, where the dead have been left unburied on the streets or abandoned in their homes, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appealed for divine intervention and ordered three days of fasting and prayer.
And in Sierra Leone, which has the most confirmed infections, 800 troops including 50 military nurses were sent to guard hospitals and clinics treating Ebola patients, an army spokesman said.
"We are making sure that unauthorised people do not disturb the work of health personnel," Colonel Michael Samura said.
At the start of the crisis, some clinics were vandalised and health workers came under attack by youths who accused them of helping to spread the disease.
The soldiers' colleagues coming to the end of a tour with the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia were ordered yesterday to remain in the war-torn country rather than risk returning home because of Ebola.
The closed-door WHO meeting was not expected to make a decision until tomorrow. But the session itself underscored the severity of the threat posed by the disease, which causes severe fever and unstoppable bleeding.
Also yesterday, a Spanish air force plane left for Liberia to bring an infected Spanish missionary priest home for treatment.
Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia were brought back to the United States for treatment in recent days.
The outbreak in Nigeria remains minor compared with the other affected west African nations, but rising numbers in Lagos - sub-Saharan Africa's most populous city - pose unique challenges to health workers.
Nigeria's Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said all seven confirmed cases in his country had "primary contact" with Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian finance ministry employee who brought the virus to Lagos on July 20.
