JOHANNESBURG — Three leading experts on the Ebola virus said Wednesday that experimental drugs should be provided to Africa, and that if the deadly virus was rampant in Western countries it would be “highly likely” that authorities would give people access to the medications..

A decision to allow two American health workers infected in Liberia to have access to an experimental treatment — while dozens of African doctors and nurses have perished — has ignited a controversy over the ethics of the decision, which reportedly side-stepped Liberian health regulations.

The latest figures, through Aug. 4, show that 1,711 people in West Africa have been diagnosed with the disease and 932 have died, the World Health Organization announced.

Guinea has suffered the most deaths, 363, followed by 286 in Sierra Leone and 282 in Liberia.

A Saudi Arabian man who visited Sierra Leone died of Ebola in a hospital in Jiddah, Saudi authorities confirmed Tuesday.

Nigerian authorities Wednesday announced five new Ebola cases and two deaths.

Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told journalists that Nigerian authorities had contacted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a bid to get access to the experimental drug that American Dr. Kent Brantly and hygienist Nancy Writebol were given.

Calls to make the drug available in Africa have ignited controversy, with some critics citing previous cases when pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on people in developing countries, which harmed people.

With a roughly 55 percent mortality rate in the current outbreak, experts say the drug might kill people who otherwise would have survived. But for others, the ethical issue is that Africans, in particular at-risk health workers, should be given the same right to refuse or accept the treatment that Brantly and Writebol were offered.

Three leading experts called for steps to allow African governments to make their own choices on whether the drugs should be available to some needy cases.

The call came in a joint statement from Peter Piot, who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976 and is director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; professor David L. Heymann of the Chatham House Center on Global Health Security; and professor Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust.

They said a Hamburg virologist who pricked herself with an Ebola-infected needle in Hamburg five years ago had been given access to an experimental drug and didn’t fall ill.

“She chose to take the vaccine. We expect it is a risk we would take if one of us were exposed to Ebola. It is highly likely that if Ebola were now spreading in Western countries, public health authorities would give at-risk patients access to experimental drugs or vaccines,” the statement said.

It added: “The African countries where the current outbreaks of Ebola are occurring should have the same opportunity. African governments should be allowed to make informed decisions about whether or not to use these products, for example to protect and treat healthcare workers who run especially high risks of infection.”

Very limited amounts of the experimental drug are available, but the main reasons cited for not making the drug available to Africans were ethical, not practical.

The statement from the three experts said that with hundreds dead in West Africa, the “dire circumstances call for a more robust international response.”

“This epidemic is now so extensive that we can expect it to last for some months yet,” they said. “That means the West must fast-track safety testing of drugs and vaccines in unaffected countries, so that those which perform well could go into fuller trials in the affected region before the outbreak ends.”

On Twitter, some Africans were critical of the decision to provide the drug, untested on humans, to Brantly and Writebol, but not to offer Africans the same right.

“Americans are just wicked and selfish. Secret serum shows up as soon as two of their people get it. What is humanity?” tweeted Uwani Aliyu, a makeup artist from Abuja, Nigeria.

A Congolose Twitter user with the handle @MrsBasabose wrote: “6 days ago Dr Sheik Umar Khan, a heroic African who treated 100 Ebola patients died after being infected. The American was ‘cured.’ “

Kgopedi oa Namane from South Africa added, “So the secret serum used to cure 2 Americans from Ebola is too secret to reach Africans dying like flies? JustAsking.”

But the WHO ruled out extending the drug to Africa. A spokesman said the organization “would not recommend any drug that has not gone through the normal process of licensing and clinical trials,” Reuters reported.