WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that some progress is being made to tamp down the Ebola outbreak in West Africa but much more needs to be done.
"We are nowhere near out of the woods yet in West Africa," Obama told reporters as he met top advisers, including Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain.
Obama urged Congress to approve, before leaving on a holiday recess in mid-December, the $6.2 billion that he has requested to fight the virus blamed for thousands of deaths, including two people who died in the United States after becoming infected in West Africa.
"While we should feel optimistic about our capacity to solve the Ebola crisis, we cannot be complacent simply because the news attention on it has waned. We have to stay with it. That's why I'm calling on Congress to make sure that it approves before it leaves the emergency funding request that we've put forward," he said.
The current outbreak of Ebola is the worst on record. It has killed at least 5,177 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Grant McCool)
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