The World Bank is kicking in $200 million to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help contain a deadly Ebola outbreak.  It will help pay for medical supplies, medical staff salaries, and other priorities to contain the West African epidemic and try to prevent future outbreaks.

“I am very worried that many more lives are at risk unless we can stop this Ebola epidemic in its tracks,” said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim – a doctor and PhD who formerly led the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, in addition to being a banker.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the death toll is now 887, with 61 deaths in the past two days, and 163 new cases confirmed.  In fact, the rate of infection has picked up by 33 percent since the last WHO report at the end of July.

Ebola’s spread into a fourth country is quickly reaching nightmarish proportions.  Liberian-American businessman Patrick Sawyer showed symptoms of Ebola on a flight from Monrovia to Lagos, Nigeria on 20 July, and collapsed in the airport.  He died in hospital in Lagos soon after.  Now, Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu says the doctor who treated Sawyer is confirmed to have contracted Ebola – 70 other people believed to have come into contact with Sawyer are being monitored, eight have been placed in quarantine, and three of them are “symptomatic”.

Dubai airline Emirates is now the first major international airline to suspend flights in response to the West African Ebola Outbreak, halting flights between Dubai and Conracky, Guinea.  Emirates’ rapid growth has made Dubai a major hub and therefore a transfer point for flyers transferring to and from all over the globe.