AFP

Dubai

 

Dubai health authorities yesterday quarantined an air passenger who arrived from Liberia after he showed symptoms of Ebola, in the first suspected infection registered in the Gulf region.

The United Arab Emirates health ministry said the man who travelled from Liberia through Morocco had been “isolated for checks after he suffered diarrhoea”, although his body temperature was normal.

All passengers on the same plane have undergone the necessary checks, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Wam news agency.

The airport of Dubai is one of the main hubs for travel between the West, Asia and Australasia.

Ebola is only transmitted by close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who is showing symptoms such as fever, diarrhoea or vomiting.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has so far claimed 4,493 lives, out of 8,997 recorded cases since the start of the year, most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

World leaders yesterday declared the Ebola outbreak the worst global health emergency in years as governments stepped up measures to stop
the virus spreading from West Africa.

As it emerged that the second healthcare worker to be infected in the US had taken a domestic flight the day before she was quarantined, a new urgency gripped national governments.

US President Barack Obama called his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and the UN Security Council issued a stark warning that the outbreak was spreading out of control.

“Each leader set out what they are doing to help the countries affected and then discussions focused on how to improve coordination,” British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said in London.

“Leaders agreed that this was the most serious international public health emergency in recent years and that the international community needed to do much more and faster.”

Obama urged Cameron, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to “make a more significant” contribution to the fight.

European Union health ministers meet in Brussels today, with member states under pressure to follow Washington in sending troops to West Africa to help fight the virus.

Separately, the UN Security Council urged the international community to “accelerate and dramatically expand” aid to the West African countries battling the epidemic.