Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop confirmed the deployment, which includes four medical professionals and two support team members, would join 26 Australian healthcare workers working in the Australian-run Ebola Treatment Centre in Sierra Leone. Since its opening two weeks ago, the clinic had treated 16 patients, Ms Bishop said.

A further 38 workers from the government-contracted medical provider, Aspen Medical, are completing preliminary training in Canberra before departing to assist with the global crisis.

The World Health Organisation says there have been 19,497 reported cases of Ebola and 7588 reported deaths, and the number of reported cases was fluctuating in Guinea yet decreasing in Liberia.

But aid agencies are now warning of the unimaginable task of rebuilding the affected countries, as communities grapple with the unlikeliness of of the virus abating in 2015.

More importantly, increased food prices and its distribution could lead to another crisis such as famine or a food crisis, the agencies have cautioned, as more than half of Liberia's workforce have stopped working because of the outbreak in March this year.

Aid organisation Oxfam has started refocusing its efforts on what happens once the virus does tail off, urging donor countries to engage in more long-term commitments. "Indeed, 2015 will continue the challenges of prevention, containment and treatment of Ebola but will also bring with it the new challenges of helping people rebuild their livelihoods and earning capacity, and protecting those made vulnerable by the outbreak of this disease –particularly orphans, households where the main income earner has died and families in quarantine," Oxfam Australia's Africa humanitarian response co-ordinator  Richard Simpson said.

"The tailing off of the epidemic is expected to take a considerable amount of time and it is likely that Ebola cases will continue to occur during the whole of 2015," Mr Simpson said.

Medecins  Sans Frontiers Australia executive director Paul McPhun said the Ebola outbreak was still not being adequately addressed and could result in secondary crises such as famine, and malaria outbreaks because of poorly established healthcare systems in the affected countries.

"There has been an incredibly slow international response, in terms of co-ordination," Mr McPhun said.

MSF has 3400 staff on the ground in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Of those, 25 were from Australia, he said.

"In each country there are unique problems due to the way the country has responded, but generally what we could say is that absolute numbers of infection seem to be decreasing."

In November, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia would fund the operation of a treatment centre in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. Aspen received 400 expressions of interest from Australians who wished to travel to West Africa, 200 of whom lodged formal applications.