MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia’s president has declared a state of emergency in the West African nation amid an Ebola outbreak that shows no signs of slowing.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf made the announcement on national television late Wednesday, saying that some civil rights may have to be suspended as a result of the crisis.

Observers say the crisis in Liberia has deepened because many people are choosing to keep their ill relatives at home instead of bringing them to isolation centers.

The disease that has killed at least 282 people in Liberia alone is spread through contact with the bodily fluids of Ebola patients showing symptoms.

In her speech, Sirleaf said that “ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease.”

West Africa is in the midst of the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak. The outbreak began in Guinea, and then quickly spread throughout the country, before moving to Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Nigeria.

Nigerian authorities rushed to obtain isolation tents Wednesday in anticipation of more Ebola infections, as they disclosed five more cases of the virus and a death in Africa’s most populous nation, where officials were racing to keep the gruesome disease confined to a small group of patients.

The five new Nigerian cases were all in Lagos, a megacity of 21 million people in a country already beset with poor health-care infrastructure and widespread corruption. All five were reported to have had direct contact with one infected man.

At least 932 deaths in the four countries have resulted from Ebola, with 1,711 reported cases.

Additional reporting by Mashable

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