CRI听力:Sierra Leone Widens Ebola Quarantine

Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma has widened a quarantine to include another one million people in an attempt to curb the spread of Ebola.

Now a total of five districts have been isolated, which means more than a third of Sierra Leone's 6.1 million people now find themselves unable to move freely.

The announcement follows a three-day nationwide lockdown that ended on Sunday night.

The World Health Organization says the situation in Sierra Leone continues to deteriorate, and nearly 600 people have been killed so far.

Meantime in Liberia, the country hardest-hit by the outbreak, medical teams from the United States are racing to meet patients' needs.

The WHO says Liberia alone needs 1,500 more beds to treat Ebola patients.

The country has a population of 4.2 million but only has 51 doctors and under 1,000 nurses.

Dr. Frank Mahoney is head of the US CDC team in Liberia.

"One of the big challenges we are having is getting people out of their homes into a treatment center and we have been working furiously trying to set up treatment centers, but they have been outpacing our ability to stand them up."

The Obama administration has dispatched 3,000 US troops to Liberia to set up facilities and form training teams to help treat Ebola victims.