GENEVA (AFP) - The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has now infected more than 5,000 people in west Africa and killed around half of them, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Tuesday.

The UN health agency said a total of 5,357 people had been infected across five west African countries, and that 2,630 had died.

In the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Libera and Sierra Leone, 45 per cent of the cases were recorded in the past three weeks, WHO said.

Here are the latest WHO numbers, as of Sept 14: In Guinea, where the outbreak began at the start of the year, Ebola had claimed 601 lives, or 64 per cent of the 942 people infected.

Thirty-three per cent of those cases surfaced in the 21 days leading up to Sept 14.

In Liberia, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak, 1,459 people had died from Ebola, representing 54 per cent of the 2,720 people infected.

A full 52 per cent, or 1,383, of those cases were recorded during the three weeks before Sept 14.

In Sierra Leone, 562 people had died from Ebola, accounting for 34 per cent of the 1,673 people infected.

Thirty-nine per cent of those cases were recorded during the preceding 21 days.

Nigeria had, as of Sept 14, seen eight Ebola deaths since the virus first arrived in the country with a Liberian finance ministry official who died in Lagos on July 25.

That amounts to 38 per cent of the 21 cases. Six of those cases have emerged in the past three weeks.

Senegal's only confirmed Ebola case - a Guinean student who crossed the border just before it was closed on Aug 21 - has recovered, but the country will not be declared transmission-free before 42 days have passed since the case was recorded.

Healthcare workers, already in very short supply in the impoverished countries hardest-hit by the outbreak, have paid an especially heavy price. A total of 318 of them have been infected across four west African countries, 151 of whom have died.

Guinea: 61 healthcare workers infected, 30 of whom have died.

Liberia: 172 healthcare workers infected, 85 of whom have died.

Sierra Leone: 74 healthcare workers infected, 31 of whom have died Nigeria: 11 healthcare workers infected, five of whom have died.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has meanwhile been hit by a separate Ebola outbreak, which as of Sept 15 had killed 40 people out of 71 cases.

There are five known distinct species of Ebola, and the outbreak raging in west Africa stems from the Zaire species.

That species caused the world's first known Ebola outbreak in DR Congo in 1976, which until now was the deadliest on record, with 280 deaths.

The current DR Congo outbreak meanwhile is believed to come from two separate species, the Zaire and the Sudan strain, which first surfaced in Sudan, also in 1976.