Ebola death toll nears 1,000-mark as cases rise

A Nigerian nurse who treated a man with ebola is now dead and five others are sick with one of the world’s most virulent diseases said authorities, as the death toll rose to at least 932 people in four West African countries.

The growing number of cases in Lagos, a megacity of some 21m people, comes as authorities acknowledge they did not treat Patrick Sawyer as an ebola patient and isolate him for the first 24 hours after his arrival in Nigeria last month.

Sawyer, a 40-year-old American of Liberian descent with a wife and three young daughters in Minnesota, was travelling on a business flight to Nigeria when he fell ill.