Ireland is to provide an additional €120,000 in funding in response to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. It brings the total Irish aid in the current crisis to €350,000.

Meanwhile a Spanish priest is being flown out of Liberia after becoming infected with the virus.

The Spanish government has sent an air force plane to repatriate the man (75). The virus has killed almost 900 people in West Africa this year.

Two American aid workers infected with Ebola are being treated in hospital in the US.

Madrid-based journalist Pablo Foley-Elias says another missionary will also be on the flight with the priest.

And Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry says a man (40) who was being tested for the Ebola virus - and was in a critical condition in an isolation ward - has died.

The man had started showing symptoms following a recent trip to Sierra Leone, and was being treated in a hospital in Jeddah.

It comes as the director-general of World Health Organisation (WHO) and presidents of west African nations impacted by the outbreak meet in Guinea to launch a new joint response plan as part of an intensified international, regional and national campaign to bring the outbreak under control.

"The scale of the Ebola outbreak, and the persistent threat it poses, requires WHO and Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to take the response to a new level, and this will require increased resources, in-country medical expertise, regional preparedness and coordination" says Dr Margaret Chan.

"The countries have identified what they need, and WHO is reaching out to the international community to drive the response plan forward".

The Response Plan in West Africa identifies the need for several hundred more personnel to be deployed in affected countries to supplement overstretched treatment facilities.

The WHO says hundreds of international aid workers, as well as 120-plus WHO staff, are already supporting national and regional response efforts. But they say more are urgently required.

"Of greatest need are clinical doctors and nurses, epidemiologists, social mobilization experts, logisticians and data managers. The plan also outlines the need to increase preparedness systems in neighbouring nations and strengthen global capacities" it adds.