At least nine people died and dozens more were missing Friday after an overcrowded wooden boat went down off the south coast of Guinea, officials said.

The long thin pirogue boat had 69 passengers aboard when it left the port of Farmoriah for a weekly market further along the coast of the west African country, the national navigation agency said. 

International medical agency Medecins Sans Frontieres said Tuesday the world was "losing the battle" to contain Ebola and called for a global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to west Africa.

"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," MSF international president Joanne Liu told a U.N. briefing in New York. 

Ebola-hit nations met for crisis talks on Thursday as the death toll topped 1,500 and the World Health Organization warned that the number of cases could exceed 20,000 before the outbreak is stemmed.

Nigeria announced that the virus had reached its oil-producing hub, dashing hopes that the country had successfully contained it to its biggest city, Lagos.

Guinea-Bissau is closing its border with Guinea, one of the west African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus, Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira said Tuesday.

"In light of information provided by the health ministry and after a series of consultations, the government of Guinea-Bissau has decided to close its southern and eastern borders" with Guinea "until further notice," Pereira told a press conference.

Guinea on Saturday said it was closing its land borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone in a bid to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus which has claimed hundreds of lives in the three west African countries.

"In order to better control contact" with people suspected of carrying the Ebola virus, "Guinea has decided to temporarily close its land borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone," government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said.

Walking out of a Guinean isolation center after three weeks fighting off the deadly Ebola virus, "Old Diallo" feels he has experienced a miracle -- but now fears being labelled a freak or an untouchable.

"God is great!" he tells Agence France Presse as he waits for relatives in the hospital entrance.

The World Health Organization said Monday the death toll from the Ebola epidemic in west Africa has now reached 887 after 61 more fatalities recorded at the end of last week.

Giving an update on the deadly virus -- the worst Ebola outbreak ever -- the U.N. health agency said the 61 deaths were reported between last Thursday and Friday in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

With 20,000 citizens living in three countries affected by an Ebola outbreak, Lebanon is taking a series of measures to prevent the virus reaching its shores, government officials said Friday.

Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, during a tour of Beirut airport, said the ministry "has asked all airlines, particularly those bringing people from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, to inform Lebanese authorities about anyone displaying suspicious symptoms."

A regional center is being set up in Guinea to coordinate the response to the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola that has killed hundreds of people in West Africa, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The hemorrhagic fever sweeping through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has left an estimated 539 people dead, according to the latest WHO figures.

In a hospital in the Guinean capital Conakry, a doctor can barely conceal his anger over the Ebola crisis sweeping the country and the officials who once made hopeful pronouncements about the end of the outbreak.

"They lied, so our partners, and even the local population, put down their guard. And this is the result -- the epidemic has spread throughout the country," says Dr Alphadio from the Donka hospital.