US restricts airport arrivals
New US rules requiring air passengers from the three West African countries worst hit by Ebola to travel via one of five airports are coming into effect.
Travellers from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea must now arrive at O'Hare in Chicago, JFK, Newark, Washington's Dulles or Atlanta, where they will undergo enhanced screening.
The World Health Organisation is due to convene an emergency meeting later. The current outbreak of the virus has already killed more than 4,500 people. Most of the deaths have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Travellers from these countries will have their temperatures checked as part of screening programmes, despite experts warning such moves are unlikely to have an impact.
The new security measures come as public concern grows in the US, where three people have been infected and one person has died from the virus.
The precautions stop short of the travel ban sought by some US Congress members.
The WHO was set to convene an emergency meeting on Ebola in Geneva yesterday to discuss whether additional measures were needed to fight the outbreak in West Africa.
Meanwhile, Rwanda has boosted travel restrictions to stem the spread of the Ebola virus, ordering travellers who have been in the United States and Spain to send daily updates, the health minister said yesterday.
The United States on Tuesday welcomed having the chance to cooperate with its old Cold War rival Cuba in the fight against Ebola.
"We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with Cuba to confront the Ebola outbreak. Cuba is making significant contributions by sending hundreds of health workers to Africa," the source told AFP.
Cuba - a country the size of Portugal with a population of just 11 million -- has sought to place itself at the forefront of the international response to the Ebola epidemic, sending 165 doctors and nurses to Sierra Leone to combat the disease.
Meanwhile, a contingent of 83 doctors and nurses departed Cuba late Tuesday for Guinea and Liberia, bringing to 256 the number of medical workers sent by Havana to fight the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
In Sierra Leone, two people died in a riot sparked when health workers struggling to contain the Ebola epidemic tried to take a blood sample from an elderly woman, doctors told AFP yesterday.
A machete-wielding mob clashed with security personnel in the eastern town of Koidu and then went on a rampage on Tuesday, after preventing a medical team from taking the blood from the 90-year-old mother of a youth leader, doctors from the local government hospital said.
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