WHO debates using untested U.S. drugs - but Obama says it is too early

Police and 750 soldiers on streets to enforce quarantines in Sierra Leone

Outbreak is deadliest ever, more than three times worse than 1976 epidemic

Fearing he had deadly virus, authorities did not touch or move him for hours

It comes as distressing photos show man collapsed in a Guinea street

Infected: Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, 75, tested postive for Ebola and is being treated in Madrid

A Spanish priest has become the first person carrying the deadly Ebola virus to be brought back to Europe for treatment.

The revelation came as shocking new pictures emerged showing more victims being dumped in streets across west Africa by terrified relatives who fear being quarantined.

Liberia and Sierra Leone have declared a state of emergency, with hundreds of soldiers setting up roadblocks to stop rural residents reaching the cities as health experts discuss using untested drugs to stem the 900-strong death toll.



At a hospital in Madrid this morning, a convoy of medics in protective suits escorted missionary Miguel Pajares, 75, after he was repatriated on a specially-adapted Airbus plane from Liberia in west Africa.

He was put in quarantine on Saturday after testing positive for the killer disease.

Mr Pajares, who had been treating patients infected with Ebola at a hospital his Catholic humanitarian group runs, was flown back to Spain accompanied by a nun.

Although she was uninfected, she was also quarantined.

The pair were taken to an isolation ward at Madrid's Carlos III hospital as around 30 patients were reportedly evacuated.



'The patients have arrived well, though a little disoriented. They are both now in quarantine,' Madrid health official Javier Rodriguez told a news conference.

Twelve medical staff working in three shifts will care for them in a building which has been cleared of other patients.

Mr Pajares' condition overnight was initially said to have deteriorated according to local reports, which claimed he was on a drip and was now unable to walk unaided.

But Rafael Perez-Santamarina, director of Madrid's La Paz hospital, later said medical checks showed Mr Pajares was in stable condition.

Madrid regional government health chief Francisco Javier Rodriguez said neither of the patients were bleeding, which is a symptom of an advanced stage of the illness.

The priest's brother Emilio said he was 'worried but happy' about the transfer amid concerns within Spain that the nation's hospitals may not successfully contain the illness.



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Isolation: The Spanish missionary arrived this morning in an isolation chamber at Madrid's Carlos III Hospital

Convoy: Mr Parajes was under heavy guard as he became the first confirmed patient to be treated in Europe

Global attention: Journalists gathered outside the hospital in Spain's capital as the 75-year-old arrived

Mercedes Vinuesa, director general of public health in Spain, downplayed fears over the repatriation by insisting: 'The safety protocols we will use guarantee minimum risk.'

Mr Pajares had worked as a missionary in Africa for nearly five decades and was due to return to Spain for good in September.

Speaking before he was flown back he said: 'I'd like to return because we have a very bad experience of what's happened here.

'We are abandoned. We want to go to Spain and be treated like people.'

It comes after a Saudi man who was being treated for Ebola-like symptoms after visiting Sierra Leone died yesterday at a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

If confirmed it would be the first Ebola death outside Africa.



In the worst-hit regions, meanwhile, new images show more victims lying in the street as chaos and fear reign among the authorities.

Flown to Europe: Spanish authorities used this plane to evacuate the 75-year-old priest in an isolation chamber

Protected: The priest was flown to Spain on this adapted Airbus A310 belonging to the Spanish Air Force Careful: Miguel Pajares could be seen being loaded into an ambulance at an air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz Worker: The 75-year-old had been treating Ebola patients in one of the worst-hit parts of Liberia, west Africa Arrival: Workers were carefully attired as the infected missionary arrived at the airstrip just outside Madrid

Medical worker: The missionary (right) had been working with patients at the St John Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, as part of a team from the Catholic organisation Orden Hospitalaria San Juan de Dios

In the capital of Guinea, Conakry - a city of 1.7million people - shocking images showed police looking on helplessly after a man collapsed in a puddle of water in a crowded street.

Officers sealed off the area but no one approached or moved the man for several hours because they feared he might be infected.

He was then taken to an Ebola control centre for assessment and to be quarantined.

Guinea was where the outbreak began and has been the worst-affected country so far with a death toll of 363 - higher on its own than any previous Ebola outbreak in history.



And there was renewed panic today in Nigeria's capital Lagos - Africa's biggest city with 21million people living in cramped, unhygienic conditions - as five new suspect cases and a second death were reported.

The first death came last month when U.S. citizen Patrick Sawyer died of the virus in Lagos after arriving from the Ebola-hit region. Now a nurse who treated him has also died.



Authorities are scrambling to get hold of a larger stock of isolation chambers by tomorrow as the country's health minister declared a global crisis.



Warning: Signs line the streets urging people to seek treatment as families leave relatives to die on the streets

Danger: Mr Parajes said people are not treated like humans in Liberia, where he had been treating patients

Confusion: Police guarded this man for several hours before anyone moved him after he collapsed in a puddle in Guinea's capital Conakry, a city of 1.7million people. The death toll in the country has reached at least 363

Danger: The man was taken to an Ebola control centre for assessment to be quarantined in Conakry, Guinea

Left, the man left on the street in Guinea's capital; Right, a woman in Monrovia, Liberia - where Spanish priest Miguel Parajes, 75, had been working at a hospital - a woman weeps over the death of a relative

Nigerian health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters: 'We have a national emergency, indeed the world is at risk.

'Nobody is immune. The experience in Nigeria has alerted the world that it takes just one individual to travel by air to a place to begin an outbreak.'

Millions in Lagos live in cramped conditions without access to flushable toilets and signs posted across the city are warning people not to urinate in public.

Kenneth Akihomi, a 47-year-old Nigerian worker installing fibre-optic cables, said he was carefully washing his hands to avoid infection - but most people were relying on their faith to stay healthy.

'They're not panicking. They are godly people,' he said. 'They believe they can pray, and maybe very soon there will be cure.'



Major airlines such as British Airways and Emirates have halted flights to affected countries, while many expats are leaving.

British Airways has suspended all flights to Sierra Leone and Liberia for the rest of the month. The airline does not fly to Guinea but flights to Lagos are running as normal.

Mourning: A Liberian woman weeps over the death of a relative from Ebola yesterday in the Banjor Community on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. The virus has killed at least 282 people in the impoverished country

Rising toll: Nurses carry the body of an Ebola victim on the way to bury them yesterday in Monrovia, Liberia

Impoverished: Authorities had been slow to react to the outbreak because of a lack of medical facilities

Tears: Relatives weep on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, as a relative is taken away for treatment

HOW NATIONS ARE REACTING GUINEA (363 dead) Treatment and isolation centres set up in country where outbreak emerged in March SIERRA LEONE (286 dead) Army deploying 750 soldiers in 'Operation Octopus' to man roadblocks which are cutting off some rural areas completely in the east LIBERIA (282 dead) President orders citizens to stop hiding their sick relatives and bring them to isolation centres as Army sets up similar road blocks NIGERIA (1 dead) Medics prepare isolation chambers for use tomorrow as new suspected cases emerge in Lagos Advertisement

Now Liberia - where victims have been dragged into the streets and abandoned - has declared a 90-day state of emergency.

Worried Liberians queued at banks and stocked up on food in the ramshackle capital Monrovia, where the Spanish priest had been working in a hospital.

Others took buses to unaffected parts of the West African country - but freedom of movement has been severely restricted.



The Liberian Army has up road blocks for 'Operation White Shield' to stop people travelling to the capital from rural areas.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said her countrymen were still refusing to send sick relatives to isolation centres, massively increasing the spread of the epidemic.

The outbreak required 'extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people,' she added.

'Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease', she said.

The Foreign Office has advised Britons against all but essential travel to Liberia's eastern provinces.



In Sierra Leone, 750 soldiers have set up a 50-day 'complete blockade' of several areas stricken by the virus including the Kenema and Lailahun districts.



Nervous residents have clashed with forces over the enforced quarantines in the eastern regions as part of 'Operation Octopus.'

Police chief Alfred Karrow-Kamara said: 'No vehicles or persons are allowed into or out of the districts.'

Security forces will mount foot patrols to ensure civilians do not slip past their roadblocks and only traders who have registered with security agencies will be able to bring in food and medicines.



A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'The Government of Sierra Leone has closed all schools and banned public gatherings in Kailahun district due to the Ebola outbreak.

'All vehicles and their passengers entering and leaving Kailahun district must undergo screening by the authorities at checkpoints.

'Follow news reports, be alert to any developments and avoid large crowds and demonstrations.'



Protection: The virus can be contained if health workers wear protective clothing like this Liberian nurse today

Workers in rural west Africa have been given emergency supplies in the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history

Precaution: Liberian nurses spraying disinfectant around a house after loading the body of an Ebola victim on a truck for burial in the Virginia community yesterday on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia

Health catastrophe: In Monrovia, Liberia, where the Spanish priest was working, bodies have been left in the streets as fear grips people and stops them sending relatives to isolation centres, the nation's President said

Shocking: Relatives of Ebola victims in Liberia have started dragging their loved ones' bodies out of their homes and dumping them on the streets in a bid to avoid being quarantined. Above, a man walks past the dead body

SURGE OF FAKE CURES IN AFRICA Messages have been circulating in Africa which claim a plant can 'cure' Ebola, offering false hope to people who have lost friends and family members. The note - circulating on mobile phone messaging apps - says: 'Bitter-Kola has been internationally verified to cure Ebola. 'Simply peel and chew! May God protect us all, Amen!' Bitter-Kola is a local name for the Garcinia kola plant, which grows throughout west Africa and has long been used in herbal and folk medicine. Some doctors in Nigeria have told newspapers it may help - but there is no hard evidence, and other medical experts have dismissed the claims as completely untrue. Advertisement

Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viruses and causes some victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears.

It can only be transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is sick - for example, blood, semen, saliva, urine, feces or sweat.

The current outbreak has been by far the most deadly since the virus was identified in 1976, according to the World Health Organisation.



Since breaking out earlier this year, the Ebola virus had killed at least 932 people in four west African countries as of Monday.

Up-to-date death tolls are hard to obtain because many cases are in remote areas, the virus has a lengthy incubation period and medics do not have the facilities to carry out full tests.

This year there have been at least 1,711 cases of the disease, which has no proven cure.

Before now the most deadly outbreak was in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976 - the year the virus was discovered - killing 280 people or 88 per cent of everyone infected.

More than half of those infected in the current outbreak have died.

Next week a global panel of medical ethics experts will discuss whether to use experimental, untested drugs to treated the epidemic.

The summit is being convened by the World Health Organisation after two American aid workers from the group Samaritans Purse received the experimental treatment.

They were repatriated earlier this week after being diagnosed with the drug, produced by the tiny California biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General at the WHO, said: 'We are in an unusual situation in this outbreak.

'We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine. We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is.'

But U.S. health officials warned there are 'virutally no doses available' as President Barack Obama said it was too early to export untested drugs.

Toll: How the virus is killing people in west Africa, according to World Health Organisation figures from Monday

Crisis: The disease is now thought to have spread via the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (pictured) to Lagos, Nigeria, a 'megacity' of 21million people - many of whom live in unhygienic conditions

Nigerian health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said: 'We have a national emergency, indeed the world is at risk'

THE 'EXPERIMENTAL' DRUG GIVEN TO TWO U.S. AID WORKERS No Ebola drugs or vaccines have even entered mid-stage human trials, let alone been approved. The furthest along have been tested only in monkeys and a handful of humans. California firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical, whose drugs were used on two U.S. aid workers this week, began developing its ZMapp treatment more than a decade ago. It consists of a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, highly specific proteins produced in bioengineered tobacco plants which target the virus. In 2012 Mapp announced that when rhesus macaque monkeys received the cocktail an hour after infection by Ebola, all survived. When they received it 48 hours after infection, two-thirds survived. Last year, another ZMapp test saw infected monkeys injected 104 to 120 hours after infection, when they were already showing symptoms. Some 43 percent recovered. Advertisement

President Obama said: 'We've got to let the science guide us and I don't think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful.

'The Ebola virus both currently and in the past is controllable if you have a strong public health infrastructure in place.

'We're focusing on the public health approach right now, but I will continue to seek information about what we're learning about these drugs going forward.'

Today the global children's charity UNICEF warned the disease's orphans are being shunned by their communities because people fear they are infected.

Roeland Monasch, UNICEF's representative in Sierra Leone, said: 'Children who are orphaned by the disease are finding it hard to be accepted in their communities and this has had huge psychological impacts on their lives.

'The Ebola outbreak has led to widespread misconceptions and myths and these are posing serious challenges in the fight to eradicate it.'



Britain is increasing its £2million aid pledge to help patients in Sierra Leone and Liberia to £5million after the government's Cobra emergency committee met to discuss the crisis.



International development secretary Justine Greening said: 'It is absolutely critical that the UK helps to make sure the Ebola outbreak is contained. At the same time we are working with our partners to care for people affected by the outbreak, particularly children left without their parents.'

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman added: 'Medical advice remains that the risk to the UK is very low. The UK has an established, well-tested system to deal with any known or suspected imported case of this disease.

'As part of that, precautionary planning measures are being kept up-to-date and the UK's Public Health authorities are working closely with clinicians, border staff and other agencies to ensure they are prepared to deal with any eventuality.

'The UK will continue to monitor the situation closely.'