Washington DC - Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the World Health Organization, the UN body from which President Donald Trump pulled out, was late in identifying a deadly outbreak of Ebola.

Asked by reporters how the US would respond to the virus outbreak, Rubio said: "The lead is obviously going to be CDC and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing, unfortunately."

Rubio said that the US, which has committed around $13 million in assistance after sweeping aid cuts last year, was hoping to open around 50 clinics to treat Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"It's a little tough to get to because it's in a rural area... and hard-to-get-to place in a war-torn country, unfortunately," Rubio said.

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"We're going to lean into that pretty heavy."

President Trump, in one of his first acts on returning to office last year, set in motion a US withdrawal from the WHO, which he attacked bitterly over its response to Covid.

Last February, Elon Musk admitted to "accidentally" cancelling funding for Ebola prevention efforts amid his work with the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which oversaw the dismantling of USAID.

The WHO earlier Tuesday said that it was concerned about the "scale and speed" of the Ebola outbreak that has killed an estimated 131 people in DR Congo.