States of emergency in Africa

Liberians stocked up on food Thursday after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced emergency powers lasting 90 days. "Operation White Shield" allows Liberia's government to contain the epidemic by restricting movement, deploying troops and giving police the power to impose quarantines on badly affected communities.

Lacking the medical equipment and training to handle the new disease, some 32 health workers have already died of Ebola in Liberia and many sick people have gone untreated after doctors deserted their posts.

"The scope and scale of the epidemic, the virulence and deadliness of the virus now exceed the capacity and statutory responsibility of any one government agency or ministry," Johnson Sirleaf said in a speech late on Wednesday. "The threat continues to grow," she added.

Over half of those infected have died so far. Johnson Sirleaf justified the measures by calling the state of emergency necessary for "the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people."

Early Thursday, health officials flew a Spanish priest infected with Ebola out of Liberia.

'A complete blockade'

Alarm has grown after a Liberian with US citizenship died in Nigeria after arriving on an airplane from Monrovia via Ghana and Togo. A nurse who treated him also died, and officials isolated at least five people with symptoms, raising fears of an outbreak in Lagos, a city of 21 million people.

In eastern Sierra Leone - the worst-hit area of that country - police chief Alfred Karrow-Kamara said security forces had been deployed on Wednesday "to establish a complete blockade" of the Kenema and Kailahun districts, setting up 16 checkpoints on major roads. "No vehicles or persons are allowed into or out of the districts," he added.

The World Health Organization reports that 932 people of the 1,700 diagnosed so far have died. On Wednesday, WHO experts began meetings to agree on measures to tackle the highly contagious virus and whether to declare an international public health emergency.

Earlier this week the US flew out two infected Americans from Liberia. After doctors administered the two patients a trial drug based on the tobacco plant, Ebola specialists urged WHO to offer Africans the chance to take such experimental medication. However, a spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that "there are virtually no doses available."

mkg/kms (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)