President Obiang Nguema made the announcement at a press conference in Malabo.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea during a press conference in the capital, Malabo on Monday, September 15, 2014 announced that flights from the country’s national airline companies will resume soon to West Africa, local press reported.

He said the closure of borders and suppression of flights from the country’s national airline companies to West Africa was because Equatorial Guinea had no protection measures against the spread of the Ebola virus. The government, he reportedly said, has given the country the means to prevent the entry of the Ebola virus and flights will soon be re-opened to continue to offer services in Africa. According the Equato-Guinean Head of State, the closure of borders was not a solution to the ravaging Ebola virus.

The Malabo press conference that focused on the Ebola epidemic that has greatly hit the West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and slightly Nigeria, was organized along the side lines of the award of the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea Prize for 2014. Obiang Nguema proposed the creation of an African Committee to follow up Ebola, stating that Africa has to find solutions to problems that concern the continent as it suffers from diseases whose treatments have not been discovered. He said Africa has to take its responsibilities. Measures such as closing borders cannot solve the problem, “we cannot escape from the issues that concern human beings,” he said