World Health Organization experts fighting the world's worst outbreak of Ebola hope for improved supplies of experimental treatments and progress with a vaccine by the end of the year.

That may come too late to put an end to the current epidemic, which is more likely to be stopped by standard infection control measures, but it offers hope for the next inevitable outbreak.

After ruling on Tuesday that it is ethical to offer unproven Ebola drugs to people infected or at risk in West Africa, the challenge is to secure enough doses to make a difference in an outbreak that has already claimed more than 1,000 lives.