US President Barack Obama has urged Congress to approve US$6.18 billion to help fight the Ebola outbreak, reminding them that even though the story has faded from the headlines, the battle is far from over.
"Every hotspot is an ember that if not contained can become a new fire, so we cannot let down our guard even for a minute," Obama said on Tuesday. "And we can't just fight this epidemic. We have to extinguish it."
Obama toured a lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where a team of researchers last week published promising results from the first phase of a research trial for an Ebola vaccine.
Most of Obama's request is aimed at the immediate response to the disease. But the package also included US$1.5 billion in contingency funds - money that could become a target if lawmakers looked for cuts, said Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an alliance of US non-governmental aid groups.
While lawmakers recognise that the United States had to take action to arrest Ebola, some are wary of giving the administration too much leeway.
"I think there is less understanding of the need to stay in it for the long run and to build the capacity of countries to ensure this doesn't happen in the future," Worthington said.