Ebola toll rises to more than 6,900: WHO

GENEVA: More than 6,900 people have now died from the Ebola virus, almost all of them in west Africa, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

As of December 14, there were 18,569 cases of infection of the deadly virus in the three worst affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and 6,900 deaths.

This is out of a total of 18,603 cases and 6,915 deaths across eight countries affected by the outbreak.

In some good news, the UN agency said Mali has not seen a new case for three weeks, completing one of the two 21-day incubation periods needed to be declared free of the virus.

The death toll in other countries was unchanged: six in Mali, one in the United States, and eight in Nigeria, which was declared Ebola free in October.

Spain and Senegal, which have both been declared free from Ebola, meanwhile counted one case each, but no deaths.