Mining companies are beefing up protection against the spreading Ebola virus in West Africa while maintaining investment in new projects in a region with vast untapped mineral wealth.

Attempts to keep the deadly virus out of work sites range from turning away anyone who has come from countries where Ebola is present to installing infrared heat monitors to measure body temperatures of employees as they pass through mine gates.

Similar devices have been deployed in airports to identify carriers during outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), bird flu and swine flu.

A Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, David Heymann, has asked companies to consider installing sonar bat repellant technology at mine sites.

Some medical experts believe that bats and other animals are the natural hosts of the Ebola virus, which has led Guinea to ban consumption of bat soup, grilled bat and other such items.

Eating “bush” meats, such as rats and other rodents, by employees should also be discouraged, according to Heymann.

Tawana Resources in August suspended all non-essential field work at its mine in Liberia after a state of emergency was declared, but there has been little to suggest mining companies are taking investments elsewhere.

Nearly a third of global mineral reserves are in Africa and the continent as a whole offers the highest prospects for unearthing new mineral resources, according to geologists.