Southampton's Emma Taylor has returned home from fronting charity Street Child's Ebola aid in Sierra Leone

Until just weeks ago Makeni, Sierra Leone was the place she called home and she walked the same streets as the disease’s victims.

The 27-year-old from Bitterne, Southampton has been forced to return home, but she refuses to forget about the plight of her friends.

As the number of Ebola cases are predicted to climb to 10,000 a week by the World Health Organisation – and with death rates of 70 per cent – she is on a mission to help the thousands of orphaned children left alone.

“You hear harrowing stories every day but it is very real. It is absolutely heartbreaking.”

Emma moved to Sierra Leone 18 months ago as fundraising manager for UK charity Street Child, which operates in Sierra Leone and Liberia to help destitute children.

Since the Ebola outbreak began last summer, the charity launched its crisis appeal to support children orphaned by the virus – finding them new homes, providing much needed food, clothing and where necessary medical support.

Emma explains: “There are all sorts of awful stories from social workers discovering quarantined families with no access to food.

“A lot of people have had really traumatic experiences, especially children if they have lost both their parents and siblings.

“We have heard of eight-year-olds |looking after about five younger siblings, but left with nothing.

“To explain to young children why their mummies and daddies aren’t there anymore is horrific.”

Emma, a former Wildern School and Barton Peveril student, decided to leave West Africa nine weeks ago to return to the UK where she could lead the fundraising efforts from London.

However, before she was due to fly back there was a three-day lockdown in Sierra Leone aimed at containing the outbreak, which has no proven cure and is transmitted through sweat, blood and saliva.

“Nobody was able to leave their houses for three days. It was a very haunting atmosphere with the military and police on the streets.

 “It is all everyone is talking about and there is an overwhelming sadness.

“My family did panic from this end but it would have been very unlikely I would catch it knowing the risks.

“If you are there and not helping the Ebola crisis though, you are just in the way.”

There are currently 5,000 Ebola orphans across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea - and that number rises at an alarming rate every day.

The disease has so far claimed more than 4,900 lives and there have been more than 13,400 suspected and confirmed cases.

Emma explains such is the fear of infection in the country’s small towns and villages that neighbours and relatives are shunning the surviving children of the dead, too fearful of the disease to take them into their homes.

Charity workers are therefore to persuade communities that children who have lost parents to Ebola are not necessarily contagious themselves and would be safe to follow the African tradition of taking orphans into their homes after a 21 day quarantine period.

“Essentially they are left alone and after the death of their parents they have literally nothing.

“Their homes and possessions have been burnt because of the fear of infection. That includes mattresses, bedding, toys.

“They have no food, no water, they aren’t allowed to use the well and they have no belongings. It is desperate.”

Today Emma, who works from London, is still in daily contact with her friends in Sierra Leone and regularly hears devastating news of more cases in the town.

“It’s getting to the point where everyone knows someone who is affected. It is getting very scary.

“On the news I see the roads I have walked down, and I know the people in the photographs. “The world has suddenly focused on my little world and it makes me very sad.

“It is now described as a humanitarian disaster and it is growing in magnitude. We don’t know when it is going to stop.

“We really do have a responsibility to these children to do as much as we can now.”

For information on how to help go to street-child.co.uk.