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West Africa’s Ebola crisis has prompted the Obama administration preparing to assign up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the region.  The president plans to send additional medical and logistical support West Africa’s overwhelmed health care system.

MSN News reported President Barack Obama planned to announce the stepped-up effort Tuesday during a visit to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta amid alarm that the outbreak could spread and that the deadly virus could mutate into a more easily transmitted disease.

MSN continued to report, administration officials said Monday that the new initiatives aim to:

— Train as many as 500 health care workers a week.

— Erect 17 heath care facilities in the region of 100 beds each.

— Set up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts.

— Provide home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will deliver to Liberia this week.

— Carry out a home- and community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle exposed patients.

Real Clear Politics reported officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans ahead of Obama’s announcement, said the cost of the effort would come from $500 million in overseas contingency operations, such as the war in Afghanistan, that the Pentagon already has asked Congress to redirect to carry out humanitarian efforts in Iraq and in West Africa.

The officials said it would take about two weeks to get U.S. forces on the ground.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, applauded the new U.S. commitment. Coons earlier had called for the Obama administration to step up its role in West Africa.

“This humanitarian intervention should serve as a firewall against a global security crisis that has the potential to reach American soil,” he said.

The hardest hit areas of West Africa are in the nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.  The Ebola virus is spread through direct contact via bodily fluids of effected patients; this places nurses, doctors and other medical personnel extremely vulnerable to the disease, which presently has no vaccine or approved treatment.

Real Clear Politics reported White House press secretary Josh Earnest, responding to criticism that the U.S. needed a more forceful response to the outbreak, said Monday that Obama has identified the outbreak “as a top national security priority,” worried that it could contribute to political instability in the region and that left unchecked the virus could transform and become more contagious.

He said the administration responded “pretty aggressively” when the outbreak was first reported in March.

“Since that time our assistance has steadily been ramping up,” he said.

Currently four Americans have or are being treated in the U.S. from the Ebola virus after being evacuated from West Africa.

To date the U.S. has spent $100 million dollars in fighting the Ebola virus and is prepared offered to do more.