A ban on travel from West Africa might seem like a simple and smart response to the frightening Ebola outbreak there. It's become a central demand of Republicans on Capitol Hill and some Democrats, and is popular with the public. But health experts are nearly unanimous in saying it's a bad idea that could backfire.

The experts' key objection is that a travel ban could prevent needed medical supplies, food and health care workers from reaching Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the nations where the epidemic is at its peak. Without that aid, the deadly virus might spread to wider areas of Africa, making it even more of a threat to the U.S. and the world, experts say.

A health care worker who may have come in contact with fluids from an Ebola patient who died in Texas is now on vacation on a cruise ship, the US State Department said.

The person is not showing symptoms of the disease and is voluntarily remaining in their cabin, it said.

The U.N. trust fund for Ebola has barely $100,000, a pittance compared to what the world body says it needs to fight the worst outbreak on record, the New York Times said Friday.

The cash, which came from Colombia, is a tiny fraction of the $1 billion that the U.N. has estimated it needs to fight the epidemic that has killed around 4,500 people, the Times said.

Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluid, such as getting an infected person's blood or vomit into the eyes or through a cut in the skin, not through the air, experts say. And people infected with Ebola aren't contagious until they start showing symptoms, such as fever, body aches or stomach pain, research shows. But fears over the virus spreading have prompted an outsized response:

THREE DIAGNOSED IN U.S.:

As Thomas Eric Duncan's health deteriorated, nurses Amber Joy Vinson and Nina Pham were at the Ebola patient's side.

They wore protective gear including face shields, hazardous materials suits and protective footwear as they inserted catheters, drew blood and dealt with his body fluids. Still, the two somehow contracted Ebola from the dying man.

France will start carrying out health checks on Saturday on travelers arriving by plane from Guinea, one of the worst-hit nations in the spreading Ebola epidemic.

Medics at Paris's main international Charles de Gaulle airport will take the temperature of passengers arriving from the daily flights still operating from the Guinean capital Conakry, Health Minister Marisol Touraine told Agence France Presse.

Weight-loss guidelines have long counselled dieters that kilos shed too quickly are likelier to creep back than those lost at a slower pace.

But an Australian study, published on Wednesday, says this is wrong.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged a "much more aggressive" response at home to the Ebola threat, and insisted that the risk of a serious outbreak on U.S. soil was low.

After a crisis meeting with top aides at the White House, Obama underlined the importance of helping African countries stem the spread of the virus, calling such aid "an investment in our own public health."

A Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and the nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols, according to a statement released late Tuesday by the largest U.S. nurses' union.

Nurses were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments, worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting, said Deborah Burger of National Nurses United.

Nurses at the Texas hospital where a Liberian Ebola patient died last week complain they were given few rules and little guidance on how to treat the severely ill man, contrary to assertions by US health authorities.

The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Thomas Frieden, said earlier this week that a "breach in protocol" by health workers led to a nurse becoming infected with the potentially fatal virus.