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The UN has said $600m (£365m) in supplies is needed to fight west Africa's Ebola outbreak, as the death toll from the worst epidemic of the virus exceeded 1,900 and Guinea said it had penetrated a new part of the country.
The pace of the infection has accelerated, and there have been close to 400 deaths in the past week, according to officials.
"This Ebola epidemic is the longest, the most severe and the most complex we've ever seen," said Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), at a press conference in Washington. She said there were more than 3,500 cases across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The haemorrhagic fever has spread to Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone, and has killed more people than all outbreaks since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976. There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments.
An experimental vaccine that Canada said it would give to the WHO for use in Africa remains in the laboratory that developed it, as officials work out how to transport it. Ottawa said in August that it would donate 800-1,000 doses of the vaccine, being held at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
"We are working with the WHO to address complex regulatory, logistical and ethical issues so that the vaccine can be safely and ethically deployed as rapidly as possible," a Health Canada spokesman, Sean Upton, said. "For example, the logistics surrounding the safe delivery of the vaccine are complicated." He said one of the challenges was keeping the vaccine cool enough to remain potent.
Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics.
The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday that a federal contract worth up to $42.3m would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical.
Dr David Nabarro, senior UN coordinator for Ebola, said the cost of getting the supplies needed by west Africa countries to control the crisis would amount to $600m. That was higher than an estimate of $490m by the WHO last week.
Moving workers and supplies around the region has been made difficult by restrictions by some countries on air travel and landing rights as they try to control Ebola's spread.
"We are working intensively with those governments to encourage them to commit to the movement of people and planes and at the same time deal with anxieties about the possibility of infection," Nabarro said.
He said Ghana president has agreed to allow an airbridge or route through the country to affected regions to move people and supplies.
Ivory Coast, which closed its borders with Liberia and Guinea last month, said it would open humanitarian and economic corridors to its two western neighbours.
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