The devastating Ebola outbreak caught the world off guard, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Friday as he questioned the international community’s readiness to respond to other pandemics.

"This has surprised everyone. None of us thought that Ebola would be looking like it’s looking right now,” he told reporters in Sydney of the disease which has so far killed more than 2,600 people in west Africa.

"This Ebola crisis of today is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Already more people have died as a result of this outbreak than all the Ebola outbreaks in history combined.”

Kim welcomed efforts by the United States to pledge military help to combat the outbreak, and said the United Nations was now handling Ebola as if it were "sort of an outbreak of war”.

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday declared the outbreak a threat to world peace and called for urgent aid to West Africa, the epicentre of the growing crisis.