45,000 Indians in countries hit by Ebola





As the Ebola fever death toll crossed 932, the government on Wednesday said 44,700 Indians were living in African countries affected by the virus and there was a possibility of them returning if the situation worsened. In a written statement in Parliament, health minister Harsh Vardhan said travellers coming from or transiting through affected countries to India would be tracked. The government also advised against non-essential travel to west Africa, the epicentre of the outbreak. P 14 Lagos: The death toll of the Ebola epidemic neared 1,000 on Wednesday as fears rose that the disease is now taking hold in Africa's most populous nation of Nigeria after a second death among seven cases in Lagos.

The spread of the disease comes as the World Health Organization (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 on Wednesday , with 1,711 confirmed cases, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The death of a nurse in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million people, came as 45 deaths were confirmed across west Africa between Saturday and Monday , with aid agencies 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, Presi dent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appealed for divine intervention and ordered three days of fasting and prayer.

And in Sierra Leone, troops were sent to guard hospitals to "deter relatives and friends of Ebola patients from forcefully taking them from hospitals without medical consent", a presidential aide said.

Suspected Saudi patient dies in Jeddah hospital A Saudi national, who fell ill after returning from Sierra Leone, died early on Wednesday in his hospital isolation ward where he was being tested for the Ebola virus, said the Saudi health ministry. The 40-year-old returned on Sunday from Sierra Leone and was then hospitalized in Jeddah after showing symptoms of the viral hemorrhagic fever. AP