The world must learn from the fight against AIDS to help beat the deadliest-ever outbreak of Ebola, the new global head of the Red Cross said on Wednesday.

While strict measures are needed to defeat Ebola in West Africa, dishing out blame will not help, said Elhadj As Sy, chief of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The death toll of the Ebola epidemic neared 1,000 Wednesday as fears rose that the disease is now taking hold in Africa's most populous nation of Nigeria after a second death among seven confirmed cases in Lagos.

The spread of the disease comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) met in an emergency session in Geneva to decide whether to declare an international crisis.

A Spanish air force plane left Wednesday for Liberia to fly home a 75-year-old Spanish missionary infected with Ebola, the first patient to be returned to Europe in a fast-spreading outbreak of the deadly disease.

The military Airbus A310, specially equipped for a medical evacuation, took off for the west African country from Madrid's Torrejon military air base at around 1:30 pm (1130 GMT), the defense ministry said in a Twitter message.

The death toll in West Africa's Ebola outbreak has hit 932, with the number of cases surpassing 1,700, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In a statement, the U.N. health agency said that its latest updated figures took account of 108 new cases and 45 deaths reported by Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone between last Saturday and Monday.

A Saudi national, who fell ill after returning from Sierra Leone, died early Wednesday in his hospital isolation ward where he was being tested for the Ebola virus, said the Saudi Health Ministry.

The 40-year-old returned on Sunday from Sierra Leone, where there has been an Ebola outbreak, and was then hospitalized in Jeddah after showing symptoms of the viral hemorrhagic fever.

In the deserted shops and marketplaces of west Africa's towns and cities, traders worry about a secondary, insidious effect of the world's most deadly Ebola outbreak: the prospect of financial ruin.

The tropical virus has claimed almost 900 lives since it emerged in the forests of southern Guinea at the start of the year, but it is also killing off business and threatening manufacturing.

Daily, long-term doses of aspirin can slash the risk of cancer of the digestive tract, according to an overview of research published on Wednesday.

Aspirin greatly reduces the risk of developing and dying from bowel, stomach and oesophageal cancer, its authors said.

The government of Sierra Leone has deployed hundreds of troops Ebola clinics, to enforce the isolation of patients, the president's office said on Tuesday.

A presidential aide told Agence France Presse the soldiers would "deter relatives and friends of suspected and Ebola patients from forcefully taking them from hospitals without medical consent".

An American woman infected with the dangerous Ebola virus -- the second U.S. patient evacuated from the growing outbreak in West Africa -- arrived Tuesday in the United States for treatment.

After landing at a military air strip aboard a small medical evacuation plane, Nancy Writebol, 60, was transported by ambulance to Emory University Hospital.

A Spanish missionary working in Liberia has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, the aid organization he works for said Tuesday.

Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest, tested positive for the disease at a hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia where he worked, Spanish charity Juan Ciudad ONGD said in a statement.