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The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is out of control but can be stopped, the head of the World Health Organization chief said on Friday.

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“This outbreak is moving faster than our efforts to control it,” Margaret Chan told the presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone at a meeting in Guinea’s capital Conakry.

“If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries,” she said, according to a WHO transcript.

“This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response,” Chan added.

Also Friday, WHO officials said they will hold an emergency meeting next week in Geneva, looking at whether the Ebola outbreak constitutes “a public health emergency of international concern.”

The agency said that if the meeting does reach that decision, it would “recommend appropriate temporary measures to reduce international spread.” The WHO statement did not elaborate on what those measures might be.

The outbreak is by far the largest in the four-year history of the disease, with 729 deaths so far, including more than 60 healthcare workers, and 1,323 cases overall, she said.

Experience showed that the outbreak could be stopped and the general public was not at high risk of infection, but it would be “extremely unwise” to let the virus circulate widely over a long period of time, Chan said.

“Constant mutation and adaptation are the survival mechanisms of viruses and other microbes. We must not give this virus opportunities to deliver more surprises.”

Meanwhile, officials at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta continued to be on standby on Friday for the arrival from West Africa of an American aid worker infected and seriously ill with the virus.

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The aid worker, whose name has not been released, will be moved in the next several days to a special isolation unit at Emory. The unit was set up in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds said Thursday that her agency is working with the U.S. State Department to facilitate the transfer.

Reynolds said the CDC is not aware of any Ebola patient ever being treated in the United States, but five people in the past decade have entered the country with either Lassa Fever or Marburg Fever, hemorrhagic fevers similar to Ebola.

U.S. aid workers in ‘stable but grave’ condition

News of the transfer follows reports of the declining health of two infected U.S. aid workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia on behalf of North Carolina-based Christian relief groups Samaritan’s Purse and SIM.

The death toll from Ebola in West Africa has topped 700. The U.S. State Department said Thursday an infected aid worker, who has been identified, will be flown to Atlanta for treatment in the coming days. (Tommy Trenchard/Reuters)

“I remain hopeful and believing that Kent will be healed from this dreadful disease,” Amber Brantly, the wife of Dr. Brantly, said in a statement.

Brantly and Writebol were said to be “in stable but grave” on Thursday, the relief organizations said. A spokeswoman for the groups could not confirm whether the patient being transferred to Emory was one of their aid workers.

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a conference call that transferring gravely ill patients has the potential to do more harm than good.

New vaccine to be tested on humans

Meanwhile, the U.S. National Institutes of Health plans in mid-September to begin testing an experimental Ebola vaccine on people after seeing encouraging results in preclinical trials on monkeys, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s allergy and infectious diseases unit, said in an email.

In its final stages, Ebola causes external and internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. About 60 percent of people infected in the current outbreak are dying from the illness.

Writebol, 59, received an experimental drug doctors hope will improve her health, SIM said. Brantly, 33, received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who survived Ebola with the help of Brantly’s medical care, said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Frieden could not comment on the specifics of either treatment, but said, “We have reviewed the evidence of the treatments out there and don’t find any treatment that has proven effectiveness against Ebola.”