Ebola is likely to hit Australia in the coming months but transmission and fatality rates will be low, experts say.
"I think it's very unlikely that we'll get much transmission in Australia," Nossal Institute for Global Health's Professor Barbara McPake said ahead of a conference on global health security in Melbourne on Wednesday.
"As the epidemic gets larger and larger in west Africa the likelihood of the odd case emerging in Australia is quite high, but I do think Australia will deal with it very well.
"If anybody dies in Australia it's likely to be somebody who has come already at a fairly advanced stage of the infection.
"It would be very unlikely to be somebody who has the disease transmitted to them here."
World Health Organisation health systems financing director David Evans said the worldwide death rate was likely double before the end of the year.
"But hopefully after that it will be controlled," he said.
"I think one could expect the number of deaths will double probably, but beyond that the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control) estimated a lot more than that, but all of the modelling is really not very accurate.
"Hopefully it will be under control much more quickly than people expect."
