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Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) health workers prepare at ELWA’s isolation camp during the visit of Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola, David Nabarro, in Monrovia on August 23 — Reuters

LUSAKA — More than 100 trucks hauling copper from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been denied entry into Botswana over fears of an Ebola outbreak in Congo, leaving the trucks stranded at a border crossing, local media reported yesterday.The trucks, en route to South Africa from Democratic Republic of Congo, have been stranded in neighbouring Zambia since Monday, when they were denied entry into Botswana, the Times of Zambia newspaper reported.

Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province, about 1,200km north of the capital, Kinshasa. Most of its copper mines are in Katanga, about as far from Kinshasa to the southeast as Equateur is to the north.

At least 1,427 people have died of the deadly hemorrhagic virus since it broke out in the remote jungles of southeast Guinea in March. It then spread quickly to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

South African driver Anthony Abel told the Times of Zambia that drivers coming from the DRC were not being allowed entry into Botswana regardless of their nationality.

“We don’t know how long this will take. The problem is not on the Zambian side but on the Botswana side,” Abel said.

Zambia said this month it would restrict entry of travellers from countries affected by the Ebola virus and would ban Zambians from travelling to those countries, one of the strictest moves yet by a southern African country against the deadly virus.

Zambian security authorities positioned at the Kasumbalesa border crossing point with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have refused Congolese officials access to the country due the presence of the Ebola virus in DRC’s Equator region, sources confirmed. The Congolese delegation led by the Katanga province Interior minister, Juvenal Kitungwa was heading towards Ndola to attend a joint commission meeting with Katanga and Zambia’s Coperbelt Province.

The move by the Zambian authorities has been sharply criticised in neighbouring DRC since the virus broke out only in the Equator province which is located at more than 3,000km from Lubumbashi from where the delegation had come.

As a consequence of the return of the delegation, the joint commission meetings convened to end the common security, migration and exchange issues between the two provinces has been postponed indefinitely.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warned yesterday   that the number of people affected   by the Ebola virus could rise to 20,000 within the next nine months and a projected half a billion dollars would be needed to fund efforts  aimed at stopping the spread of the disease. In a document released yesterday, the UN health body said the outbreak of the disease “continues to accelerate.” More than 40 percent of reported cases have occurred within the last three weeks, the report said.

As of August 28, health authorities in the four affected nations—Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone—have reported 3,069 cases of the disease since the outbreak started in December. The disease, a virus that causes a fever so high it punctures blood vessels to cause internal bleeding, has already killed 1,552 people. There is no vaccine to treat the disease. — Wall Street Journal.