Mixed Ebola messages

Thursday's unanimous Security Council declaration urged governments, airlines and shipping companies to lift any travel restrictions based on the Ebola outbreak, saying such measures "contribute to the further isolation of the affected countries and undermine their efforts to respond to the Ebola outbreak."

The message apparently did not reach the government in Sierra Leone, which started a three-day total lockdown on Friday. How the measure would be enforced, with all citizens asked to stay indoors for 72 hours, was not clear. Volunteers were set to go from house to house looking for Ebola victims who were either too scared to check into a hospital, or had been turned away by overburdened medical staff.

"Today the life of everyone is at stake, but we will get over this difficulty if all do what we have been asked to do," Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma said in a national address late on Thursday.

UN urges major funding boost

The Security Council, in only its second ever sitting devoted to a public health issue - the first concerned HIV/AIDS - described the outbreak as a threat to international peace and security. Ahead of the session, the UN's World Health Organization revised its estimated Ebola figures upwards, saying that more than 2,600 people had died from at least 5,300 known cases.

"The gravity and scale of the situation now require a level of international action unprecedented for a health emergency," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, announcing the formation UN-led response effort involving a "rapid and massive mobilization" of people, material and financial resources.

"This international mission … will have five priorities: stopping the outbreak, treating the infected, ensuring essential services, preserving stability and preventing further outbreaks," Ban told the emergency session. He said that the current financial contributions fell far short of what was required, saying the international target should stand at a minimum of $1 billion (775 million euros).

US envoy to the UN Samantha Power praised "a degree of unanimity and unity that we rarely see" in the session, but warned that "if today's resolution is not followed by action on a scale and scope commensurate to the virus, this resolution will be cited years from now as evidnce that we raised hopes that we didn't deliver on."

Guinean Ebola workers killed

Dealing with the outbreak of a virus with a high fatality rate, which is often slow to incubate, in some of the world's poorest countries has proved a severe challenge. Existing medical infrastructures were swiftly overwhelmed, while public misinformation has helped the disease spread.

In a rural village in southeastern Guinea on Thursday, seven bodies were discovered after locals attacked a group of health workers trying to educate villagers on the risks of Ebola. Three Guinean radio journalists reporting on the awareness program were among the dead. The team went missing on Wednesday after their delegation came under attack in violence where at least 20 people were wounded.

Misinformation about Ebola and mistrust of local and foreign health workers has proved a problem in Guinea since the outbreak, although the cause of Wednesday's unrest in the village of Wome was not immediately apparent.

Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have logged by far the highest numbers of Ebola cases during this year's outbreak.

msh/jm (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)