GCC countries will take a unified stance in fighting the deadly Ebola virus, which has been dubbed an international emergency, Tawfiq Khoja, director-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Health Ministers’ Executive Office, told Arab News on Sunday.

Khoja said the secretariat would host a meeting between senior health officials, including GCC deputy ministers of health, in Riyadh on Wednesday to take concerted action against the rapidly spreading virus.

“The meeting will discuss the national, regional and global experiences of the deadly disease and chalk out a common strategy to combat it in the respective countries,” Khoja said.

“Experts will also enlighten the audience on the developments of the disease in western and central Africa and the steps taken by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Atlanta-based Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

“We will also chalk out a set of common guidelines to follow in GCC countries and explore preventive measures that could be taken to prevent the disease from spreading in the region,” he said.

Khoja also said the meeting would decide on the course of action to be taken to prevent travel to and from the affected countries.

The meeting will also map out an effective awareness campaign in GCC countries to fight the disease.

“We also propose to come up with a declaration to the media from the GCC region on the present situation of the Ebola virus in the region,” he added.

The Ebola outbreak, which has killed almost 1,000 people in recent weeks, has affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, but has spread to other countries.

The WHO declared the virus a global health emergency on Friday.

Ebola is a severe and often fatal disease that affects and kills up to 90 percent of humans infected with the virus. The Ebola virus is passed to humans through close contact with animals, such as fruit bats, monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees carrying the virus.

Infected patients are highly contagious and pass the virus onto others who come in close contact with them, either by exposure to objects that have been contaminated with infected blood or body fluids or through direct contact with such fluids.