Families torn apart by Ebola: Photographer risks his own life to chronicle harrowing scenes in Liberia as doctors warn disease is out of control

As the Ebola outbreak continues to spread in West Africa - the current death toll standing at more than 1,000 - one photographer has bravely travelled to Monrovia, Liberia to chronicle work on the frontline. The pictures, by John Moore, from Getty Images, capture the harrowing scenes of families torn apart by the deadly disease, along with the medical workers battling to save the sick...
International doctors have admitted they don't know the true scale of deaths from the deadly Ebola virus warning the disease is spreading faster than the response.
The group Doctors Without Borders (Medecin Sans Frontieres) have likened the outbreak in west Africa to a state of war and said that the epidemic could last another six months.
Meanwhile, a medical worker on the frontline of tackling the disease in Liberia says response teams are unable to document all the cases erupting as many of the sick are being hidden at home rather than taken to Ebola treatment centres.
 

A mother and child stand on top of a mattress in an Ebola isolation station in Liberia for suspected victims of the virus

A sick child lies on a mattress in a former classroom in a primary school, which has been transformed into an Ebola ward

A woman stands over her husband with her head in her hands, after he staggered and fell, knocking him unconscious in an Ebola ward in Liberia

Workers wearing protective clothing and masks look on as the woman desperately tries to help her husband who has fallen to the ground

The ward, in a former primary school, is where people suspected of having the virus are sent by health workers

Patients in the Ebola isolation centre are forced to sleep on mattresses on the floor after being sent to the facility suspected of having the disease

Three-year-old Nino sits in a newly opened Ebola isolation centre set up by the Liberian health ministry in a closed school

Children sit in the isolation ward as the disease continues to spread in West Africa

Tarnue Karbbar, who works for the aid group Plan International in northern Liberia says in the last several days, up to 75 new cases a day are emerging in single districts.
He also added that those who have succumbed to the deadly virus are buried before teams can get to the area.
He said: 'Our challenge now is to quarantine the area to successfully break the transmission.'
It comes as Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders told reporters in Geneva on Friday that there is no sign of stopping the disease.

Getty Images staff photographer John Moore wears protective clothing, knows as personal protective equipment (PPE), before joining a Liberian burial team set to remove the body of an Ebola victim from her home

Neighbours watch as a son prepares his father to be taken to an Ebola isolation centre yesterday

The facility was constructed to house a surging number of patients diagnosed with Ebola in three west African countries

An Ebola victim is loaded on to a truck by a government burial team at a facility in Kailahun in Sierra Leone

The team then spray the coffin with disinfectant at the facility set up by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

A man carries a child through the streets near an Ebola isolation ward. Ebola, which causes a high fever, bleeding and vomiting, has no cure and no licensed treatment

She said: 'We're running behind a train that is going forward.
'And it literally is faster than what we're bringing in terms of a response.'
The doctors' warnings come as a World Health Organisation official claimed that Ebola treatment centres are filling up faster than they can be provided in west Africa.
WHO spokesman in Geneva Gregory Hartl said: 'The flood of patients into every newly opened treatment center is evidence that the numbers aren't keeping up.'

A security guard walks atop the roof of an abandoned hotel in Monrovia

Chinese doctors put on protective clothing and masks before starting work at the Harman Road Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone

He added that an 80-bed treatment centre opened in Liberia's capital Monrovia in recent days and filled up immediately. The next day, dozens more people showed up to be treated.
Meanwhile, he said that experts who are going house-to-house in Kenema, Sierra Leone, in search of infected people are discovering more cases.
Earlier the UN organisation had said the epidemic had been 'vastly' underestimated and that extraordinary measures are needed to contain the disease.
The Geneva-based organisation said in a statement that it was co-ordinating a 'massive scale-up of the international response' in a bid to tackle the spread of the Ebola.
The death toll from the condition has now climbed to 1,069 with most victims in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
The WHO said in the statement: 'The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO’s operational response plan extends over the next several months.