Obama's administration has requested an additional $88 million from Congress to fight Ebola, including $58 million to speed production of the ZMapp experimental antiviral drug and two Ebola vaccine candidates
The US is set to announce it will expand its response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, with plans to deploy 3,000 troops and reallocate at least $500m in humanitarian budget.
White House officials said that President Barack Obama would unveil on Tuesday the plan, which includes building of treatment centres, training of thousands of healthcare workers and establishment of a military control centre for coordination.
Obama, who has called the epidemic a national security crisis, has faced criticism for not doing more to check the outbreak, which the World Health Organisation said last week had killed more than 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases in West Africa.
Obama would also visit the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in the US state of Georgia.
The 3,000 military forces and a joint forces command centre would be established in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, to coordinate efforts with the US government and other international partners.
The plan will "ensure that the entire international response effort is more effective and helps to scale up to turn the tide in this crisis", a senior administration official said on Monday.
The treatment centres will have 100 beds each and be built as soon as possible, an official said.
The US plan also focuses on training. A site will be established where military medical personnel will teach some 500 healthcare workers per week for six months or more how to provide care to Ebola patients, officials said.
The World Health Organization has said it needs foreign medical teams with 500-600 experts as well as at least 10,000 local health workers, numbers that may rise if the number of cases increases, as it is widely expected to.
So far Cuba and China have said they will send medical staff to Sierra Leone. Cuba will deploy 165 people in October while China is sending a mobile laboratory with 59 staff to speed up testing for the disease. It already has 115 staff and a Chinese-funded hospital there.
Obama's administration has requested an additional $88m from Congress to fight Ebola, including $58m to speed production of an antiviral drug and two Ebola vaccine candidates.
Officials said the Department of Defence had requested to reallocate $500m in funds from fiscal 2014 to help cover the costs of the humanitarian mission.
The US aid agency would also support a programme to distribute protection kits with sanitisers and medical supplies to 400,000 vulnerable households in Liberia.
Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, on Monday called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Thursday, warning that the potential risk of the virus could "set the countries of West Africa back a generation".
Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, was expected to brief the council along with Dr Margaret Chan, WHO chief, and Dr David Nabarro, the recently named UN coordinator to tackle the disease, as well as representatives from the affected countries.
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