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Having already killed 2,400 people and infected nearly 5,000 others, and with no cure in sight, the Ebola virus has triggered the growth of a black market in what is known as convalescent serum, the protein base of blood that has been collected from survivors of the epidemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)

The serum is considered to be especially rich in antibodies that fight against the disease, and has already been administered to some patients, including Rick Sacra, an American health worker who has received transfusions from a survivor of the deadly virus.

We are supporting use of whole blood and convalescent serum to manage Ebola virus disease in the West African Ebola outbreak, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told Politico. Whole blood has already been used in a number of centers.

The main emphasis of the serum treatment is to buy time for those infected, allowing the body to build up strength to recover.

To survive, you have to build up enough antibodies to neutralize the virus, Phil Smith, medical director of the bio-containment unit at the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, where Sacra is being treated, told reporters last week. Were hoping to buy him some time, in other words, to give him antibodies to help his immune system battle the Ebola virus and let him get ahead of the curve.

There is no proven medication to treat the Ebola virus, although an experimental treatment called ZMapp is still in the development stages. This has forced those infected with Ebola, feeling they have nothing to lose, to search for alternative forms of treatment.

As word spreads about the possible benefits of the convalescent serum, the demand for survivors blood has increased, together with all of the inherent risks of being infected with other equally deadly diseases, including HIV, as well as possible anaphylactic shock due to an allergic reaction to the serum.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters that the UN watchdog is committed to helping countries eliminate the illegal trade in convalescent serum, while at the same time conducting trial experiments with serum-based treatments. The emphasis, however, was placed on protecting people from contaminated blood transfusions that are believed to exist in the black market supply chain.

It is in the interest of individuals not to just get convalescent serum without properly done going through the proper standard and the proper testing because it is important that there may be other infectious vectors that we need to look at, Chan told a press conference at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The consequences of people going to extremes to find a cure was demonstrated by a single healer in an isolated border village in Sierra Leone. The woman claimed to be in possession of special powers to cure the deadly disease.

She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from Guinea were crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment, top medical official, Mohamed Vandi, who was based in the crisis-struck Kenema district, told AFP.

She got infected and died. During her funeral, women around the other towns got infected, he told the agency. This set off a chain reaction of infections, helping to further transmit the disease.

Meanwhile, the rise of a blood black market has triggered concern over the security of medical supplies shipped to West Africa from foreign countries. On Tuesday, President Obama announced a 3,000-troop commitment to Africa in which the Department of Defense would provide military medical doctors to train up to 500 healthcare workers a week to handle the crisis, the New York Times reported.

Hospitals in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the epicenter of epidemic - are being pushed to the physical limits by what the WHO is calling the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

On Monday, the World Health Organization reported that 2,811 people have so far died from this years outbreak of the deadly virus.

Experts now hope that Pooleys blood could play a vital part in fighting the deadly disease, the Telegraph reports.

The blood of survivors contains informal antibodies that can protect against Ebola.

When transferred to another patient, doctors say, the infected person seemingly benefits from the boost to their immune system.

British nurse Pooley, 29, contracted Ebola while treating victims of the virus in Sierra Leone. He made a full recovery at a London hospital after been given the experimental drug ZMapp. Blood plasma contains antibodies that fight diseases and has been injected into Ebola victims before. Pooleys blood is said to now contain informal antibodies that could help protect against the virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to release a report Tuesday predicting as many as 550,000 to 1.4 million cases of Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone by the end of January.

Separately, earlier Tuesday WHO experts warned that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa could infect 20,000 people as soon as early November unless rigorous infection control measures are implemented.

In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, experts said: "Without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from Ebola virus disease are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months."

Since the outbreak began six months ago, a total of 5,864 confirmedcases have been recorded.

The WHO revised its estimated mortality rate from 50 percent to 70 percent in the other three countries touched by the infection: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Liberia has reported the most Ebola cases, at just over 3,000. The WHO said Monday that the Ebola outbreak was "pretty much contained" in Nigeria and Senegal.

"If control is completely successful in the way that we know it can be, then Ebola will disappear from the human population of West Africa and probably return to its animal reservoir," Dr. Christopher Dye, the WHO director of strategy and co-author of the article, said.

But if control efforts are only partly successful, Ebola in the human population could become "a permanent feature of life in West Africa," Dye said.

"Everyone is certainly working very harsh to make sure this is a not the reality that we will be seeing," Dye said, adding: "I will be surprised if we hit 20,000 by then."

Nearly 10,000 of those would be in Liberia, 5,000 in Sierra Leone and nearly 6,000 in Guinea, he said. But those numbers would only come about with no enhanced infection control.

Slow international response

Experts have criticized the slow international response saying it was an avoidable crisis, and Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) repeatedly urged governments to step up their efforts to fight the deadly outbreak.

The virus is transmitted through sweat, blood and saliva, and there is no proven cure.

British scientists are now preparing to test potential drugs and vaccines in Africa by November with a 3.2m agree from the Wellcome Trust in collaboration with the WHO, Oxford University and others. The first few volunteers were injected with a vaccine in Oxford endure week.

Pharmaceutical companies are already scaling up production of the vaccines, anti-viral drugs and other treatments that will be tested so large numbers of doses are ready as soon as the first trial results are available.

Endure week, Pooley travelled to Atlanta, in the United States, in the hope of helping an Ebola victim. He reportedly offered to undergo a blood transfusion to help the American, who has not been identified.