BRUSSELS — The European Union's newly appointed Ebola coordinator said Monday that new funds should be used to finance a vast increase in health staff and hospital beds to treat patients in West Africa.
Christos Stylianides said the number of beds for Ebola patients in the region should increase ''from 1,000 at present to 5,000 as soon as possible'' while some 40,000 staffers needed to be mobilized to set up and keep field hospitals working.
Stylianides said that overall, 244 health workers had died from a pool of 443 that had been infected by the disease as they sought to treat patients. He said that health workers ''deserve all our respect and support. Their ranks need to be strengthened and protected.''
The numbers he called for were largely in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization.
Lacking an Ebola vaccine, separating the sick from the healthy is the only way to stop transmission. But that job has been made difficult because there aren't enough beds in treatment centers or knowledgeable staff to treat everyone.
The outbreak has killed nearly 5,000 people, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and is still out of control. Stylianides acknowledged that the response was later than it should have been.
''We must be ready to admit possible mistakes,'' he said. ''All of us underestimated the danger and the extent of the threat,'' he said.
The EU and its 28 member nations have committed about $1.26 billion to fight the crisis, with about half of the pledges coming over the past week.
US Army Major General Gary J. Volesky, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, assumed command in Liberia on Saturday of the growing contingent of US forces in Liberia.
''You need our support demonstrated with action not words, and action is exactly what we are going to provide,'' Volesky said.
A 25-bed hospital for infected health care workers in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, should be fully operational in the first week of November. American doctors and nurses will staff it.
About 600 US service members are now in Liberia, according to the US Department of Defense. The United States has also set up Ebola testing labs in Liberia.
Continuing her trip to West Africa on Monday, Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States will help fight Ebola over ''the long haul.''
Power, who traveled to Sierra Leone on Monday, met with religious leaders before leaving Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first identified in March. ''We have got to overcome the fear and the stigma that are associated with Ebola,'' she told them.
Many people hide in their homes rather than seek medical care because of fears an Ebola diagnosis is an automatic death sentence and the social stigma attached to the disease, further fueling its spread. So far, more than 10,000 people are believed to have been infected.
Accra, the capital of Ghana, has become the main staging area and headquarters for the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER, the UN's first-ever emergency health mission.
Fear of the disease and its stigma is also making life difficult for foreign health care workers who are returning home after a tour treating Ebola patients, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.
Some US states are beginning to require returning doctors and nurses to quarantine themselves during the disease's incubation period, which can last up to 21 days. Ban said the world depends on health workers to fight Ebola and asked government leaders not to quarantine them.
Power described a ''heartbreaking change'' in Guinea: No one hugs or even touches, for fear of catching the disease.
Ebola is forcing such changes of behavior throughout the region. In August, Liberia's government ordered that the body of anyone who died of Ebola in Monrovia be cremated — a practice deeply at odds with the typical funeral rites in the country.
The decree has been blamed for keeping many Liberians from seeking treatment because they want to be buried if they die.