A man washes his hands as a preventive measure against the Ebola virus on a street in Monrovia, September 13, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue (LIBERIA - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY)
A man washes his hands as a preventive measure against the Ebola virus on a street in Monrovia, September 13, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue (LIBERIA - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY) Reuters/James Giahyue

U.S. epidemiologists have warned the world to brace itself as the Ebola epidemic plaguing three countries in West Africa could last 12 to 18 months more.

Researchers further said the number of infected cases during that timeframe could leap to a whopping 20,000 per month.

"We hope we're wrong," Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, told the New York Times.

The researchers based their assumptions on computer models of the Ebola epidemic, as requested by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department. The project is called project called Midas (Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study).

They said they based their estimates on the virus's current uncontrolled spread. Jeffrey L. Shaman, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and another Midas participant, said Ebola is growing exponentially, thus its simple trajectory.

As such, they expect the death toll to be higher than what the World Health Organisation has been saying.

The WHO said in August that it hoped to contain the outbreak within nine months. The total cases, it said, will only reach 20,000.

Read: Ebola Update: Death Toll in West Africa Now Hits 2,296, and Counting

The last Ebola outbreak that hit the region was from 2000 to 2001, involving Uganda, with only a total of 425 cases.

The current epidemic could have been easily prevented and controlled had the three countries involved immediately placed an effective campaign to stop the spread of the disease. Added to this was the slow and poor response from the international health community.

Researchers still believed there's still a great fighting chance to turn around their projections "if public health efforts started to work."

The estimates could drop down as long as "an effective vaccine or therapy becomes available on a large scale or many more hospital beds are supplied," Lone Simonsen, a research professor of global health at George Washington University, told New York Times.

Meantime, the United Nations has announced on Monday that the Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Sep 18 to discuss West Africa's Ebola outbreak. It added the epidemic and its response will get the necessary attention at the top levels of the US government on Tuesday morning.