Conakry (AFP) - West Africa's Ebola-hit nations have agreed to impose a cross-border isolation zone at the epicentre of the world's worst-ever outbreak, amid warnings that the deadly epidemic is spiralling out of control. 
 
 The announcement came at an emergency summit in the Guinean capital on Friday to discuss the outbreak, which has killed more than 700 people, with the World Health Organization warning Ebola could cause "catastrophic" loss of life and severe economic disruption if it continued to spread. 
 
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 "These areas will be isolated by police and military. The people in these areas being isolated will be provided with material support," she said at the meeting in Conakry. 
 
 Opening the summit, WHO chief Margaret Chan told leaders that the response of the three countries to the epidemic had been "woefully inadequate", revealing that the outbreak was "moving faster than our efforts to control it". 
 
 "If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socio-economic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries," Chan said. 
 
 She described the outbreak as "by far the largest ever in the nearly four-decade history of this disease". 
 
 "It is taking place in areas with fluid population movements over porous borders, and it has demonstrated its ability to spread via air travel, contrary to what has been seen in past outbreaks," she told the summit. 
 
 "Cases are occurring in rural areas which are difficult to access, but also in densely populated capital cities. This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response." 
 
 - $100 million action plan - 
 
 The leaders of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea used the summit to launch a $100 million (75 million euro) action plan that will see several hundred more medical staff deployed to battle the epidemic. 
 
 The three countries will also bolster efforts to prevent and detect suspected cases, urge better border surveillance, and reinforce the WHO's sub-regional outbreak coordination centre in Guinea. 
 
 Darab did not outline the exact area to be part of the isolation zone, but the epicentre of the outbreak has a diameter of almost 300 kilometres (185 miles), spreading from Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone to Macenta in southern Guinea, and taking in most of Liberia's extreme northern forests. 
 
 "The healthcare services in these zones will be strengthened for treatment, testing and contact tracing to be carried out effectively," she said. 
 
 The meeting came after Dubai's Emirates became the first global airline to announce it was suspending flights to the stricken area, while the United States, Germany, France and Italy have issued warnings against travel to the three African countries. 
 
 US President Barack Obama announced on Friday that the United States would screen delegates travelling from Ebola-hit countries to Washington for a three-day Africa summit next week. 
 
 Two Americans infected with Ebola in West Africa will be evacuated back to the United States in the coming days to be cared for in strict isolation, US officials said. 
 
 Kent Brantly, a doctor who was treating Ebola patients in Liberia, and Christian missionary worker Nancy Writebol, were being flown home, but it was not immediately clear when they would arrive back in the US. 
 
 Meanwhile Nigeria quarantined two people who had "primary contact" with a man who died of Ebola in Lagos last week. 
 
 The WHO raised the death toll by 57 to 729 on Thursday, announcing that 122 new cases had been detected between Thursday and Sunday last week, bringing the total to more than 1,300. 
 
 "Current numbers of national and international response staff are woefully inadequate," Chan said, revealing that 60 health workers had died treating patients in the outbreak. 
 
 - State of emergency - 
 
 Sierra Leone's leader Ernest Bai Koroma has announced a state of emergency, quarantining Ebola-hit areas and cancelling foreign trips by ministers, while Liberia has closed all of its schools and put government workers on leave. 
 
 Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf warned ahead of the summit that the crisis was "nearing a catastrophe" and appealed for more doctors and supplies. 
 
 Ebola, which has no vaccine, causes severe muscular pain, fever, headaches and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. 
 
 It has killed around two-thirds of those it has infected since its emergence in 1976, with two outbreaks registering fatality rates approaching 90 percent. 
 
 The death rate in the current outbreak is a lower-than-average 55 percent. 
 
 Fears that it could spread to other continents through air travel have been growing, with European and Asian countries on alert alongside African countries outside the Ebola crisis zone. 
 
 In Britain, Sierra Leone cyclist Moses Sesay was quarantined and tested for Ebola at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, before being given the all-clear, the athlete told a British newspaper. 
 
 Kenya, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin said they had enhanced screening at border points and airports. ||||| CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — The medical school professors no longer want Kadiatou Fanta in the classroom. Her boyfriend has broken up with her. Each day the 26-year-old eats alone and sleeps alone. Even her own family members are afraid to touch her months after she survived Ebola. 
 
 A healthcare worker walks near a Ebola isolation unit wearing protective gear against the virus at Kenema Government Hospital, in Kenema that is in the Eastern Province around 300km, (186 miles), from... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, Sulaiman Kemokai a Ebola virus survivor near his house in the Heigbema Village in Kenema situated in the Eastern Province around 300km, (186 miles), from the... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, Sulaiman Kemokai a Ebola virus survivor stretches in front of his house in the Heigbema Village in Kenema situated in the Eastern Province around 300km, (186... (Associated Press) 
 
 Long gone are the days when she was vomiting blood and wracked by fever. And even with a certificate of health declaring her as having recovered, she says it's still as though "Ebola survivor" is burned on her flesh. 
 
 "Ebola has ruined my life even though I am cured," she says. "No one wants to spend a minute in my company for fear of being contaminated." 
 
 The Ebola virus is only transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids of the sick, such as blood, saliva, urine, sweat or semen. When the first cases emerged in Guinea back in March, no one had ever confronted such a virulent and gruesome disease in this corner of Africa. 
 
 The current outbreak now has killed more than 1,000 people, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization. The fatality rate in previous Ebola outbreaks has been up to 90 percent, though health officials say this time up to half of victims are surviving. 
 
 While there is no specific treatment for Ebola, patients can be given supportive care such as intravenous fluids to keep them hydrated. If they can live long enough to develop antibodies to the virus they can survive, though they could still contract other strains of Ebola in the future, medical experts say. 
 
 Health workers hope that seeing living proof that people can survive Ebola will encourage fearful communities to get medical care instead of hiding the sick at home where they can infect relatives. 
 
 In Sierra Leone, Sulaiman Kemokai, 20, was released from an Ebola treatment center on Sunday after spending 25 days there. He still feels stiffness in his joints but says he is gaining strength each day. 
 
 "When I became sick, I was scared to go to hospital, I hid from my family, from health workers. After four days I couldn't hide anymore, I was too sick. An Ebola ambulance collected me and took me to the hospital," he recalls. 
 
 But some within his community are reluctant to have any physical contact with Kemokai. Those released from treatment centers are no longer contagious, though Ebola can still be present in men's semen for up to seven weeks. 
 
 Kemokai will have more family support than most: His older brother and sister also have survived Ebola, while the disease took their mother's life. 
 
 Fanta, the Guinean medical student, says she was working as an intern at a clinic in Conakry, the capital, when a patient came in from the provinces sick with what doctors initially thought was malaria. She took the man's vital signs — but as is common in Guinea — she had no protective gloves or face mask. 
 
 About two weeks later, in mid-March, she started having diarrhea and soon was vomiting blood. She says her lasting troubles began when doctors declared her cured and discharged her from the isolation ward at the hospital in early April. 
 
 Although she no longer had the virus in her bloodstream, she still was visibly unwell after nearly three weeks in the hospital. Word of her sickness and return spread quickly in the poor suburb of Tanene where she was staying with extended family. 
 
 The boyfriend she used to see every day disappeared when he heard she had Ebola. Now he won't take her calls, even months later. 
 
 She tried to re-enroll with her medical school courses at Gamal Abdel Nasser University. In a sign of just how entrenched misconceptions are of Ebola, though, even the instructors did not want her in the classrooms, even though she handed them her certificate of health. 
 
 "I still haven't taken my exams while my classmates have moved on to the next level," she laments. "The professors said they were going to grade me by telephone." 
 
 Now she's living off what money her parents can scrape together to send her from their village, and still dreaming of when she can resume her courses. 
 
 "I want to take care of patients," she says. "The reason I am alive today and speaking to you now is because doctors saved me." 
 
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 Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Michael Duff in Kenema, Sierra Leone also contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Krista Larson at https://www.twitter.com/klarsonafrica.
– The Ebola outbreak is spreading so fast that governments are putting into place "cordon sanitaire"—a tactic once used to contain the Black Death, the New York Times reports. The idea is to draw a boundary around the infected area and not allow anybody out. In this case, it's a triangular area that overlaps Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and that has seen 70% of the Ebola cases. A group encompassing all three nations set the controversial plan in motion earlier this month, reports AFP. Troops reportedly began closing roads last week. WHO officials aren’t against it, and CDC officials say it could work if used wisely. However, there is concern that those left behind the line could be abandoned. "It has a lot of potential to go poorly if it’s not done with an ethical approach," says a CDC quarantine expert. Meanwhile, public opinion of Ebola is rife with misunderstanding—one sign is the case of Guinean medical student Kadiatou Fanta, an Ebola survivor. Though now free of the disease, she has been shunned from school, her boyfriend has left her, and family members avoid her. "Ebola has ruined my life even though I am cured," she tells the AP. (The outbreak has been traced back to a 2-year-old boy.)