PRETORIA, October 17. /TASS/. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is considering the Republic of South Africa and Ghana as two possible candidate countries for hosting the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations after earlier selected host Morocco refused to hold the championship.

The authorities of Morocco announced on Thursday they decided against holding next year’s Africa Cup of Nations biennial football championship citing concerns over the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus in West Africa.

Morocco claims that it made the decision to cancel hosting the 16-nation football tournament, scheduled to run between January 17 and February 8 next year, as it wanted to avoid holding an event involving countries, where Ebola cases were registered, as well as to prevent the expansion of the deadly virus.

Issa Hayatou, the president of the African football’s governing body CAF, arrived in the South Africa Republic on Thursday afternoon in order to find a solution to the emerged problem concerning the hosting country.

The CAF earlier stated that it had no plans of postponing or changing the championship’s date of January 17-February 8.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Tuesday that the Ebola epidemic was spreading geographically and the death toll neared the figure of 4,500, while the number of probable and suspected cases exceeded 8,900.