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Thursday, November 13, 2014

UN encourages travel to 'vibrant and alive' Ebola-hit West Africa, as death toll tops 5,000


Published on Nov 13, 2014 2:57 AM

David Nabarro, the senior UN coordinator for the international response to Ebola, poses during an interview with Reuters at the UN headquarters in New York Oct 8, 2014. Nabarro on Wednesday encouraged tourists to visit West Africa, saying Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were "vibrant and alive" and that contact with infected people was largely avoidable. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) - The UN's Ebola czar on Wednesday encouraged tourists to visit West Africa, saying Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were "vibrant and alive" and that contact with infected people was largely avoidable.
"I want to encourage everybody to maintain travel, tourism even to places that have Ebola. There is just no reason not to go to Freetown, Monrovia, Conakry," David Nabarro, the UN coordinator on Ebola, told the UN Economic and Social Council.
"These are cities which have got fabulous places for tourism. They are unfortunately not very full at the moment."
His push came as the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa's three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, rose to 5,147 out of 14,068 cases as of Nov 9 end, according to the the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday.   http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/united-states/story/un-encourages-travel-vibrant-and-alive-ebola-hit-west-africa-death-to#sthash.28bfCxdY.dpuf