Older people are likely to benefit from a high-dose flu vaccine to ward off the seasonal malaise, which can be particularly dangerous to those over 65, researchers said Wednesday.

The findings in the New England Journal of Medicine are from the first randomized, controlled trial to compare high and standard doses of flu vaccine in older people.

Being overweight boosts the risk of 10 common cancers, said a study of five million UK adults that prompted a call Thursday for tougher anti-obesity measures.

Researchers calculated that 12,000 cases of these 10 cancers every year in the UK were attributable to excess body weight.

Guinea declared an Ebola outbreak that has killed 377 in the nation a "health emergency" and more flights from hard-hit west African countries were cancelled as the region awaited shipments of experimental vaccine.

Guinean President Alpha Conde on Wednesday announced a series of measures including strict controls at border points, travel restrictions and a ban on moving bodies "from one town to another until the end of the epidemic".

The Ebola virus killed 56 people in just two days, bringing the global death toll to 1,069, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The death toll, which passed the 1,000-mark at the weekend, soared higher between August 10 and 11.

Several hundred mourners joined a funeral service on Wednesday for a Spanish priest who died from Ebola after being infected in Liberia, becoming the first European victim of the worst-ever outbreak of the virus.

A black hearse transported an urn containing missionary Miguel Pajares's ashes to the chapel of the San Rafael hospital in Madrid, which was decorated with floral arrangements, including one sent by Spain's royal family.

Representatives of the Gulf monarchies met in Riyadh on Wednesday to discuss precautions against the Ebola epidemic ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in early October.

The executive bureau of the Gulf Cooperation Council's committee of health ministers met in the light of "preventive measures taken by some countries to protect against the Ebola virus... and the approach of the hajj," bureau director Taufik Khoja said.

Canada is sending up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to West Africa to help the WHO fight an epidemic, the health minister announced Wednesday.

Minister Rona Ambrose said between 800 to 1,000 doses would be distributed through the World Health Organization where it is needed.

The World Health Organization declared it's ethical to use untested drugs and vaccines in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa, although the tiny supply of one experimental treatment has been depleted and it could be many months until more is available.

The last of the drug is on its way to Liberia for two stricken doctors, according to a U.K.-based public relations firm representing Liberia. The U.S. company that makes it said the supply is now "exhausted." Later Tuesday, Canada said it would provide some of its experimental Ebola vaccine for use in West Africa.

In the rain-lashed streets of Sierra Leone's capital, emaciated mongrels pick fights with feral pigs for scraps of food, unnoticed by the market traders and office workers passing by.

The 1.2 million inhabitants of Freetown were once wary of diseased street animals, but now it is each other that they fear.

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.