WHO Starts Emergency Talks On Ebola

Global health experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) are meeting to discuss new measures to tackle the Ebola outbreak. The meeting is expected to last two days and will decide whether to declare a global health emergency. On Wednesday, a man suspected to have contracted Ebola died in Saudi Arabia. If confirmed, this will be the first Ebola-related death outside of Africa. The virus has killed nearly 900 people since February in West Africa. The outbreak began in February in Guinea, and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. On Wednesday a nurse became the second person to die from Ebola in Nigeria. Nigeria's health minister said five other cases of Ebola were being treated in isolation in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city. It comes as leading infectious disease experts have called for experimental treatments to be offered more widely. Two US aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia appear to be improving after receiving an unapproved medicine ahead of their evacuation back to the US. But it is not clear if the ZMapp drug, which has only been tested on monkeys, can be credited with their improvement.