MADRID: Spain is preparing to repatriate from Sierra Leone a Catholic missionary infected with the deadly Ebola virus, the government said on Saturday, the second Spanish case in the outbreak.

Brother Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, director of a hospital in the Sierra Leonean town of Lunsar, "has tested positive (for Ebola) and has expressed his desire to be transferred to Spain", the health ministry said in a statement.

Spain's Health Minister Ana Mato was meeting with officials of the foreign and defence ministries "to organise the transfer", it added.

Garcia is a member of the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios, a Roman Catholic order which runs Juan Ciudad, a charity working with Ebola victims.

On Saturday he was being treated in an Ebola unit in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, the order said in a statement.

He is a specialist in internal medicine, also qualified in tropical medicine, and has been director of the hospital in Lunsar for the past 12 years, it said.

It added that he had been a member of the order for 52 years and had worked in Africa for the past 30 years.

Sierra Leone on Saturday began the second day of a 72-hour nationwide shutdown aimed at containing the spread of the deadly virus.

Most of the country's six million people were confined to their homes from midnight (0000 GMT) on Friday, with only essential workers such as health professionals and security forces exempt.

Spanish authorities gave no immediate details of the likely timing of Garcia's return.

In August a 75-year-old Spanish priest became the first European to die from Ebola during the current outbreak in west Africa, the worst since the disease was first discovered four decades ago.

That missionary, Miguel Pajares, was infected in Liberia, where he worked with Ebola patients.

The epidemic has so far killed more than 2,600 people in west Africa, the UN World Health Organisation said on Thursday.

There is no widely-available vaccine or medicine for treating Ebola. Pajares was treated with an experimental US serum, ZMapp, while in isolation in a hospital in Madrid. – AFP