Members of a Unicef supported social mobilisation team walk on a street carrying posters with information on the symptoms of Ebola virus disease (EVD) and the best practices to help prevent its spread in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photos: Reuters

Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf apologised late on Saturday for the high death toll among the country’s healthcare workers who have fought an Ebola outbreak, which has killed nearly 1,000 people in three countries.

Johnson Sirleaf pledged up to $18 million for the Ebola fight, part of which will be given to health workers to help with insurance and death benefits, to fund more ambulances and to increase the number of treatment centres.

“If we haven’t done enough so far, I have come to apologise to you,” she told hundreds of health workers who gathered at Monrovia’s City Hall for a meeting with her government.

The West African Ebola outbreak, centred on Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the worst in history. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it is an international health emergency that will likely continue spreading for months.

A senior physician has contracted the disease at the Connaught referral hospital in Freetown

The disease has put a severe strain on the health systems of affected states and governments have responded with a range of measures, including the declaration of national emergencies in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, which confirmed seven cases of Ebola in Lagos.

Ebola has reaped a high toll on health workers who have acted as first responders. Liberia alone has lost at least three doctors to the virus and 32 health workers.

Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry said a senior physician had contracted the disease at the Connaught referral hospital in the capital, Freetown.

Dr Modupeh Cole contracted the disease “after treating a patient who was later proved to have the virus and died,” said ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis.

Cole was taken to an Ebola treatment centre in eastern Kailahun district, run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, Tunis said.

He is the latest Sierra Leonean medical practitioner to contract the virus. The country’s leading Ebola doctor, Shek Umar Khan, died of the disease last month and several nurses have died.

Guinea said earlier on Saturday at a news conference attended by four government ministers that it had closed its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia to halt the spread of Ebola.

Authorities said the decision was taken primarily to prevent infected people crossing into Guinea, where at least 367 people have died of Ebola since March and 18 others are being treated in isolation.

However, state television later said the borders remained open, in an about-face that appeared to highlight the difficulties governments face in coordinating policy in the face of the fast-moving outbreak.

“Guinea has not closed its borders with Sierra Leone or with Liberia. It’s rather that we have taken health measures at the border posts,” the television channel said.