Officials from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean have ordered a travel ban for people coming from Ebola-hit West African nations as the Ebola outbreak expands its reach to the western hemisphere.

On Wednesday, St. Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony declared the country to be off-limits to people who had recently travelled from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, three of the countries in West Africa most affected by the outbreak.

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This is to minimize if not to remove any possibility of a resident in the country to catch the disease.

Travellers from Nigeria are also required to show recent medical records indicating that they do not have Ebola before being allowed to enter the country.

The announcement from the St. Lucian government comes after Colombia had declared expanded travel restrictions to visitors whose visas show recent travel from West Africa.

Considered a tiny and poor nation, St. Lucia avoids any infection of the fatal virus because it has very minimal capacity "to manage any crisis that lands on our doorstep, any crisis of that kind," Prime Minister Anthony stated.

According to the Prime Minister, a spread of an epidemic of similar magnitude to that of Ebola in West Africa would be more devastating to his country of 200,000 people.

Fear of a pandemic continue to rise as a third Ebola case had been confirmed in the United States, a few days after the first Ebola patient recorded in the nation had died of the disease.

"Leaders agreed that this was the most serious international public health emergency in recent years and that the international community needed to do much more and faster," U.S. President Barack Obama stated urging the international community to continue providing support to the battle against the outbreak in West Africa.

Additional screening measures have been imposed at airports in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. to impede further expansion of the Ebola outbreak.

Tagsoutbreak, pandemic, US, UK