American doctor cured of Ebola meets President Barack Obama

Aboard Air Force One (AFP) - An American doctor cured of Ebola met President Barack Obama Tuesday, as the US leader hammered out a strategy to curtail the deadly epidemic ravaging west Africa.

Kent Brantly was infected with Ebola while working as an obstetrician in Liberia and was repatriated to an American hospital, where he was treated with the experimental drug, ZMapp.

Brantly met Obama in the White House ahead of the president's visit to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

"The President met briefly in the Oval Office with Dr Kent Brantly and his wife Amber," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard the president's plane, Air Force One.

The US will send 3,000 military personnel to west Africa to respond to the epidemic, which has already killed more than 2,400 people.

The US will also set up a command and control center in the capital of Liberia, the hardest-hit country, build new treatment centers and train health workers.

Obama is expected to present the strategy at the CDC later Tuesday.

Ebola has swept across west Africa, infecting 4,985 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.

The UN has said that almost $1.0 billion is needed to fight the outbreak, warning that 20,000 people could be infected by the highly fatal virus by year-end.