Liberia has warned it may slip back to civil war along with neighbouring Sierra Leone if the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa is allowed to spread.
Information Minister Lewis Brown said the lack of urgency in the international response risked allowing a breakdown of societies in the region, where the outbreak has claimed almost 3000 lives.
"Hospitals are struggling, but so too are hotels. Businesses are struggling. If this continues, the cost of living will go to the roof. You have an agitated population," Mr Brown said late on Monday.
"The world cannot wait for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to slip back into conflict, which could be the result of this slowness in response."
More than 3000 people have been infected in Liberia and almost 1600 people have died, with health workers turning away people from treatment units due to chronic shortages of beds and staff.
Sierra Leone, where more than 1800 have been infected and nearly 600 have died, said on Monday it had "an overflow of bodies" after a nationwide lockdown helped uncover more than 200 new cases.
The World Health Organisation warned on Tuesday the number of Ebola infections would triple to 20,000 by November, soaring by thousands every week if efforts to stop the outbreak are not stepped up radically.
Liberia has spent a decade recovering from two ruinous civil wars that ran from 1989 to 2003, leaving a quarter of a million people dead and the economy in tatters.
Sierra Leone, along with Liberia one of the world's poorest countries, is still struggling to recover from its own linked 11-year civil war, which ended in 2002.
Guinea, where more than 600 have died, has not suffered civil war but has been plagued by deadly civil unrest in recent years between supporters of President Alpha Conde and the opposition.
"The effect of Ebola is being seen not just as a public health situation but it is also a political situation. Liberia is just 10 years out of our conflict," Brown said.
"We are just in the 11th year since we started rebuilding our capacity to live together. This Ebola is threatening that capacity."
Liberia announced on Sunday a fourfold increase in hospital beds to 1000 for patients in the capital, Monrovia, by the end of October.
But Brown told AFP the government needed 1000 beds in 10 Ebola treatment units across the country "immediately", and did not have the cash.
"That is what is lowering public confidence in this fight (and) as a government, we simply cannot afford for our people to have dwindling confidence in our government to respond," he said.
