South African gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti has stepped up "surveillance" of its employees at a gold mine in Guinea near a town listed in a Guinea government report at the weekend as a newly Ebola-affected area.
AngloGold Ashanti told The Times yesterday that none of its employees at its mine near Siguiri had been infected and none of its operations had been affected.
It said it was waiting for clarification of the situation by the Guinean government.
But a World Health Organisation report on Friday listed Siguiri as among the areas in which the virus was "no longer active" - no new infections there had been reported for more than 21 days.
The WHO declared neighbouring Senegal Ebola-free on Friday and is expected to do the same for Nigeria today.
Guinea is regarded as the source of the epidemic. The first cases were reported there.
A total of 4 500 people have died of Ebola, about 900 of them in Guinea.
More than a dozen South Africans work at the Siguiri mine, according to AngloGold, but delegations from South Africa do not visit often.
"As part of our precautionary measures, travel from site to town, and travel in and out of Guinea, is strictly controlled," AngloGold spokesman Chris Nthite said.
"We continue to strengthen surveillance and conduct daily screening at our entrances and on all our employees," he said.
Some the company's local employees live in Siguiri.
Liberian President Helen Johnson Sirleaf called on the world yesterday, in an open letter to the BBC, to help in the fight against the disease.
"This disease respects no borders," she said. 'The damage is already reverberating across the world."
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