The United Nations said that the deaths from Ebola virus have reached over 4,000, according to a report by San Francisco Gate.

Aboulaye Mar Dieye heads up the United Nations Development Program's operations in Africa told Voice of America that the disease can be stopped but there is a need to strengthen global efforts to address the virus.

Dieye in an interview with Voice of America Friday was quoted as saying," It's difficult but the plan we have is we have to deal with in the next two, three months. Because if we don't, this is the prediction of the CDC Center of Disease Control in the US is saying. If we don't by January these numbers can hit 500,000 infected. Now are about 8,000. And that can be a trigger point to catastrophe. That's why for me it's the scenario that we cannot contemplate. It behooves us all international community to stop it. It is stoppable, we just have to step up the means."

The areas most affected by the virus are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. There was also one patient in the United Stated in a critical condition while cases were also reported in Nigeria.

The UN Security Council has called the spread of the virus as in "international threat" and despite the global effort to stop it by the United States, UK and France providing more help, Dieye said in the Voice of America interview,"we're not catching. It's beating us."

But Dieye said the global community could combat the virus with a united stance against it.

There is no known cure for the Ebola virus, World Health Organization web site described Ebola as a" severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding."