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West African leaders agreed on Friday to take stronger measures to try to bring the worst outbreak of Ebola under control and prevent it spreading outside the region, including steps to isolate rural communities ravaged by the disease. The World Health Organization and medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres said on Friday the outbreak, which has killed 729 people in four West African countries, was out of control and more resources were urgently needed to deal with it. WHO chief Margaret Chan told a meeting of the presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the countries worst affected - that the epidemic was outpacing efforts to contain it and warned of catastrophic consequences in lost lives and economic disruption if the situation were allowed to deteriorate. "The presidents recognize the serious nature of the Ebola outbreak in their countries," Chan said after the meeting. "They are determined to take extraordinary measures to stop Ebola in their countrie

An American aid worker infected with the deadly Ebola virus while in Liberia arrived in the United States from West Africa on Saturday and walked into an Atlanta hospital, wearing a bio-hazard suit, for treatment in a special isolation unit. A chartered medical aircraft carrying Dr. Kent Brantly touched down at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, shortly before noon. Brantly was driven by ambulance, with police escort, to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment in a specially equipped room. Television news footage showed three people in white biohazard suits step gingerly out of the ambulance. Two of them walked into the hospital, one seeming to lean on the other for support. A hospital spokesman confirmed that Brantly walked into the building under his own power. Dr. Jay Varkey, an infectious disease specialist at Emory, said he could not comment on a treatment plan until Brantly had been evaluated. Since there is no known cure, standard procedures are to pr

Police in China have detained six executives of a meat supply company at the center of the latest food safety scare to hit the country, state media reported on Sunday. _0"> Shanghai's chief of police and deputy mayor Bai Shaokang told local radio that the executives of Shanghai Husi Food, a unit of U.S.-based OSI Group LLC, had been taken into custody, Xinhua news agency said. The firm had supplied meat to foreign fast food chains McDonald's and KFC-parent Yum Brands Inc, among many others. The scandal, which also dragged in coffee chain Starbucks Corp.O>, was triggered by a local television report showing staff at Shanghai Husi using long-expired meat. The report also alleged the firm forged production dates. Food safety has been a huge concern for Chinese consumers after dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine sickened many thousands and led to the deaths of six infants in 2008. Regulators closed the Shanghai Husi plant on July 20. Poli

Saudi Arabia reported 10 confirmed new cases of a deadly respiratory disease during Islam's fasting month of Ramadan, and subsequent Eid al-Fitra holiday, after fears that an influx of pilgrims over the period might spread the infection more widely. _0"> Notices of any new confirmed cases are published at the end of every day by the Health Ministry. Ramadan ended a week ago and the Eid al-Fitra holiday ran until late last week. Hundreds of people were infected by Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in the kingdom in April and May, raising concerns about the pilgrimage in Ramadan and during October's Haj, when millions of people will travel to Mecca and Medina. MERS, which is thought to originate in camels, causes coughing, fever and pneumonia in some and has killed around 40 percent of people it has infected in the kingdom. Since 2012, when MERS was identified, Saudi Arabia has reported 298 deaths from the disease and 721 confirmed cases of infection. This ye

The bodies of two men previously showing symptoms of Ebola lay in the streets of Monrovia for four days before being collected by health workers on Sunday, residents told Reuters. _0"> "They both gave up and dropped dead on the ground on the street of Clara Town," said resident Nema Red, referring to a district of the Liberian capital. Both men had shown symptoms of Ebola such as bleeding and vomiting before they died but scared locals had refused to take them to the hospital, she added. Information Minister Lewis Brown confirmed that the bodies had been collected, although he said they had only been there for a few hours. "I can confirm that the bodies were in the street. They have been removed," he said on Sunday. (Reporting by Derick Snyder in Monrovia and Emma Farge in Dakar; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Health workers turned up in Monrovia's Clara Town district on Sunday to remove two bodies of possible victims of the Ebola virus, four days after they dropped dead there when nobody would take them to hospital. At a swampy field elsewhere in the Liberian capital, the health ministry ordered 100 graves to be dug for victims of the deadly tropical virus, but only five shallow holes partly filled with water had been prepared by Saturday evening. Monrovia's overcrowded and understaffed Elwa Hospital has had to turn away Ebola cases this week, a scenario exacerbated by the withdrawal of some international staff following the infection of two U.S. health workers here. One of them has arrived for treatment in the United States and the second is due to follow on an overnight flight on Monday. Strong resistance like this from workers too afraid to handle infected corpses or communities opposed to burying them nearby has slowed down stretched West African g

An American doctor stricken with the deadly Ebola virus while in Liberia and brought to the United States for treatment in a special isolation ward is improving, the top U.S. health official said on Sunday. Dr Kent Brantly was able to walk, with help, from an ambulance after he was flown on Saturday to Atlanta, where he is being treated by infectious disease specialists at Emory University Hospital. "It's encouraging that he seems to be improving - that's really important - and we're hoping he'll continue to improve," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Frieden told CBS's "Face the Nation" it was too soon to predict whether Brantly would survive, and a hospital spokesman said Emory did not expect to provide any updates on the doctor's condition on Sunday. Brantly is a 33-year-old father of two young children who works for the North Carolina-based Christian organizati