WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged US lawmakers to release a $6 billion war chest to help the fight against Ebola, warning that the deadly disease could not be beaten without additional funding.

Speaking at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Obama called on Congress to approve the emergency funding to help battle the virus, saying the West African outbreak remained a threat.

“We cannot beat Ebola without more funding,” Obama said.

“And if we want other countries to keep stepping up, we have to keep leading the way,” added Obama, noting that some 3,000 American civilians and military were now deployed on the ground in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, the worst-affected country.

Obama said while efforts to fight Ebola had broadly united Republicans and Democrats to date, he warned against the funding being caught in the crossfire of a bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.

“I am calling on Congress to approve our emergency funding request to fight this disease before” they recess later this month, said Obama, who requested the funding in early November.

“We have to extinguish this disease, this is not something that we can just manage with a few cases here and there.

“That is not a partisan issue. That is a basic common sense issue.”

According to latest figures from the World Health Organization, the Ebola outbreak has claimed 6,070 lives out of more than 17,000 infections.

Meanwhile, Nigerian health care workers are heading to West Africa to fight Ebola as part of the African Union’s promise to send 1,000 medical workers to the region by the end of the year.

The African Union held a ceremony Wednesday to send off the 250 Nigerians trained by the continental bloc to treat Ebola. While hundreds of health care workers have been promised by a handful of AU countries, they have been slow to deploy.

So far, 87 African health care workers have gone to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the most-affected countries.

While foreign aid has poured in to build treatment centers and provide supplies, there remains a severe shortage of trained medical workers to treat patients.