Mauritania closes Mali border over Ebola fears

Medical officials stationed in eastern Mauritania said Saturday the government had issued orders to close all land crossings to Mali and suspend weekly markets in the area. The decision was made after a two-year-old girl from Guinea died of Ebola in the Malian town of Kayes, a major transit point near the border with Mauritania and Senegal.

The toddler had reportedly travelled around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) on public buses with her grandmother before she was treated for symptoms. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the case was being treated as an "emergency" because the girl was bleeding from her nose and may have exposed many other people to the virus.

"The child's symptomatic state during the bus journey is especially concerning, as it presented multiple opportunities for exposures," the UN agency said.

Malian authorities on Saturday were working to trace everyone who may have had contact with the girl and her grandmother, and had so far put more than 40 people under observation.

Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita told France's RFI radio that his country would not shut its border with Guinea, despite the severity of the outbreak there. "Guinea is Mali's neighbor. We have a shared border that we did not close and we will not close," he said.

More than 10,000 cases

On Saturday, the WHO reported that the number of people infected by Ebola had climbed to more than 10,000, and that almost half of them had died. The figures indicate a jump of 200 cases in the four days since the last report.

The UN agency has also warned those figures may be an underestimate, and that a shortage of labs and medical staff in the worst-affected countries has made it difficult to accurately track the extent of the epidemic.

Mali is the sixth West African nation to record Ebola. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been hardest-hit by the worst-ever outbreak of the virus, which is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

Nigeria and Senegal have contained Ebola and have been declared free of the disease. Cases have also been reported outside West Africa, in the United States and Spain.

nm/bw (Reuters, AP, AFP)