Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she expects the Ebola crisis gripping her country to worsen in the coming weeks as health workers struggle with inadequate supplies, a lack of outside support and a population in fear.

“It remains a very grave situation,” Reuters quoted as saying to an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, via Skype from Liberia’s capital Monrovia.

“It is taking a long time to respond effectively. We expect it to accelerate for at least another two or three weeks, before we can look forward to a decline.”

The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has hit at least 2,296 across West Africa, with more than half of those cases in the impoverished and war-damaged state of Liberia, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Liberia’s national defense minister told the United Nations Security Council earlier on Tuesday that Ebola posed a threat to the country’s national existence and was “spreading like wild fire and devouring everything in its path.”

Sirleaf said Liberia’s response to the disease was hobbled by a lack of treatment and testing centers, a dearth of health care workers, and persistent fear and ignorance of the disease among the country’s population.