WASHINGTON, USA (AP) — The White House says the Obama administration is making strides in the fight against Ebola, citing an expanded hospital network and testing capacity at home and gains confronting the deadly disease in West Africa. To sustain that, President Barack Obama was prodding Congress yesterday to approve his request for $6.2 billion in emergency spending against the outbreak.

Obama was to visit the National Institutes of Health in Washington’s Maryland suburbs yesterday to highlight advances in research for an Ebola vaccine. He planned to congratulate NIH director Francis Collins and the director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, for their work on a vaccine.

The public attention to Ebola by the president comes as Congress is assembling a massive spending bill to keep the government operating. But the legislation has become entangled with Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which Republicans want to block.

Any final spending bill is expected to contain a pared-down version of Obama’s Ebola request. Obama asked for $2 billion for the United States Agency for International Development, $2.4 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services, and more than $1.5 billion for a contingency fund, the first item that lawmakers would likely trim.

The White House said yesterday that Obama Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain, in an update to Obama, reported that the US is better prepared to deal with Ebola at home and that administration efforts to confront the virus in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are further along than two months ago.

The administration announced yesterday that it has set up a network of 35 hospitals across the country to deal with Ebola patients. It also said that the number of labs that can test for Ebola has increased from 13 in 13 states in August to 42 labs in 36 states.

The White House said the administration has also increased the deployment of civilians and military personnel in West Africa, bumping the US presence to about 200 civilians and 3,000 troops. It said the US has opened three Ebola treatment units and a hospital in Liberia.

The upbeat White House report contrasts with an assessment from Doctors Without Borders, which said Tuesday that the international response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa has been slow and uneven. It said the international community has for the most part concentrated on building Ebola management structures, but most of the hands-on work is being done by local people, national governments and non-governmental organisations.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged that stopping the outbreak in West Africa still required additional efforts. “As long as people are suffering from the Ebola virus, we know that they are at risk of spreading that disease,” he said yesterday.

Obama’s attention to medical advances comes after a study published by US researchers last week concluded that an experimental Ebola vaccine appears safe and triggered signs of immune protection in volunteers who tested it.