Fearful of a surge of Ebola cases, Mali placed more than 440 people under surveillance, as a US hospital said Monday it had been unable to save the life of a doctor airlifted from Sierra Leone.
Officials in Mali met to consider increasing security at its border following two confirmed cases of Ebola due to infection in neighboring Guinea.
US airports also announced plans to begin enhanced screening of travelers from the west African nation.
Mali has been scrambling to prevent a minor outbreak from turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako.
A friend who had visited the imam in the Pasteur clinic also died of probable Ebola and a two-year-old child died last from the disease last month in an unconnected case in the western town of Kayes.
"The number of contacts followed by health services amounts to 442. They have all been placed under observation for health control," Samba Sow, of the Ebola emergency operations center, said in a statement late Sunday.
Teams of investigators have been tracking health workers and scouring Bamako and the imam's village of Kouremale, which straddles the Mali-Guinea border, for people who could have been exposed.
The WHO announced on Friday that the outbreak -- almost entirely confined to west Africa -- has killed 5,177 people and infected around 14,500 since Ebola emerged in Guinea in December.
The virus is estimated to have killed around 70 percent of its victims across west Africa, often shutting down their organs and causing massive bleeding.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2837790/Mali-places-hundreds-watch-bid-stem-Ebola.html
Officials in Mali met to consider increasing security at its border following two confirmed cases of Ebola due to infection in neighboring Guinea.
US airports also announced plans to begin enhanced screening of travelers from the west African nation.
Mali has been scrambling to prevent a minor outbreak from turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako.
A friend who had visited the imam in the Pasteur clinic also died of probable Ebola and a two-year-old child died last from the disease last month in an unconnected case in the western town of Kayes.
"The number of contacts followed by health services amounts to 442. They have all been placed under observation for health control," Samba Sow, of the Ebola emergency operations center, said in a statement late Sunday.
Teams of investigators have been tracking health workers and scouring Bamako and the imam's village of Kouremale, which straddles the Mali-Guinea border, for people who could have been exposed.
The WHO announced on Friday that the outbreak -- almost entirely confined to west Africa -- has killed 5,177 people and infected around 14,500 since Ebola emerged in Guinea in December.
The virus is estimated to have killed around 70 percent of its victims across west Africa, often shutting down their organs and causing massive bleeding.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2837790/Mali-places-hundreds-watch-bid-stem-Ebola.html
