Freetown, August 7 (RHC)-- In West Africa, authorities are struggling to contain a record Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 900 people and sickened more than 1,600.

Sierra Leone, which has seen the most cases, has vowed to deploy hundreds of soldiers and police to clinics and homes to enforce the isolation of people who may be infected. In Liberia, many health clinics have shut down and family members have reportedly been abandoning the corpses of infected loved ones on the street.

The virus is spreading in Nigeria, with authorities now reporting a second fatality and at least five other cases. The second fatality was a nurse who helped treat a U.S. citizen who died in Nigeria last month after flying there from Liberia.

In the United States, a patient in New York has tested negative, while two missionaries infected in Liberia are said to be improving after receiving an experimental drug. The drug has not been given to the hundreds of ailing Africans.

Liberia has declared a state of emergency and closed a major hospital. The assistant health minister there, Tolbert Nyenswah, told the Wall Street Journal dying patients are pleading for the drug used on the two Americans. "People here are asking: 'You said there was no cure for Ebola, but the Americans are curing it?'"