Nigeria declared Ebola-free

The World Health Organization says Nigeria - Africa's most populous country - has shown the world "that Ebola can be contained".

a MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) nurse
Nigeria has been declared officially free of Ebola after six weeks with no new cases. (AAP)

Nigeria has been declared Ebola-free in a "spectacular success" in the battle to contain the spread of a virus which is devastating Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia where more than 4500 people have died.

The World Health Organization said Nigeria - Africa's most populous country where eight deaths had sparked fears of a rapid spread through its teeming cities - had shown the world "that Ebola can be contained".

Another west African nation, Senegal, was declared free of the virus on Friday.

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg said the bloc must step up efforts to contain Ebola and prevent it becoming a global threat.

Amid concerns that the global response has been too slow, the 28 EU nations boosted their funding to around 500 million euros ($A750 million) and pledged to do more to get foreign medical staff onto the Ebola frontline.

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They also agreed to appoint a co-ordinator to oversee the response to the virus.

"My colleagues all agree that the idea of an Ebola co-ordinator is a good one," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

"The person will be named in the coming days."

In the US, the absence of any new cases in the last five days prompted cautious optimism from health authorities that the virus has been contained there after a flawed initial response.

It was also announced on Monday that an anonymous patient, being treated at a facility in Georgia, had recovered and been released from hospital.

And a Norwegian woman who contracted the virus while working for Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone has been cured after treatment in Oslo, the health charity said.

In another encouraging step, test results showed a Spanish nurse who was the first person to contract the virus outside Africa appears to now be clear of the disease after receiving treatment.

But while the rest of the world appeared to be winning the fight to keep Ebola at bay, the three west African countries which account for the vast majority of the deaths - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - were counting a rising human and economic cost.

The UN said a third member of its staff had died of the disease.

The WHO declared Nigeria free of Ebola after 42 days passed without any new cases of the haemorrhagic fever among its 170 million citizens.

"The virus is gone for now. The outbreak in Nigeria has been defeated," the WHO's representative in Nigeria, Rui Gama Vaz, said.

"This is a spectacular success story that shows to the world that Ebola can be contained."


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