US President Barack Obama has called on the world to "act fast" to stop West Africa's Ebola epidemic before "hundreds of thousands" are infected.
Obama urged a global expanded effort to fight the deadly disease, as he unveiled a major new US initiative under which 3000 military personnel will be posted to west Africa to combat the health crisis.
"Here's the hard truth. In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic of the likes that we have not seen before," Obama said.
"It's spiralling out of control. It is getting worse. It's spreading faster and exponentially. Today, thousands of people in West Africa are infected. That number could rapidly grow to tens of thousands.
"And if the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us.
"So this is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security, it's a potential threat to global security if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic."
‘We don’t need guns’
In the Liberian capital, Monrovia, reactions from locals were mixed.
"We don't need guns to protect us. What we need now is drugs. We need vaccine to curtail the spread of this virus," one resident, Varney Sherman said.
The move comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns the number of Ebola cases could rise to more than 20,000.
So far, nearly 5,000 people have become ill from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognised in March.
The epidemic has killed more than 2400 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
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