In pictures: Battling Ebola in Liberia

First responder Gordon Kamara waiting in the ambulance.

Mr Kamara and his crew move on when Mr Kollis refused to go with them. They head to the next village of Freeman Reserve, more than 30 miles from the capital through fields of rubber trees and past children bathing in the pools of drainage ditches.

Mr Kamara, left, is sprayed by his co-worker, Konah Deno, after they load six patients suspected to have been infected by the Ebola virus into their ambulance in the village of Freeman Reserve. Both men are donning their yellow protective suits and eye goggles.

Nathaniel Edward,2, is listless and limp. The boy’s grandmother died of Ebola, and now his mother is sick too.

Ethel Konneh, left, is consoled by one of her daughters outside the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment centre. She has just learnt her other daughter Rose Johnson passed away from Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia.

A woman being discharged from the Island Clinic Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia is being sprayed with disinfectant before she leaves the facilities.

An ambulance speeds through traffic towards the clinic carrying six patients with signs of Ebola from the village of Freeman Reserve in Monrovia. Even when ambulances can reach people, the fear of being transported to a facility where more than half the patients leave in body bags keeps some from going.

Cellphones are thrown on the ground by patients leaving the treatment unit with a clean bill of health — they discard their phones in fear that they might contain the Ebola virus.

Nowa Paye, 9, is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of the Ebola. Aid donations are still inadequate, as the international community tries to increase the ability to care for the spiralling number of people with the disease that has hit Liberia the hardest.

Taped to the wall near to the clinic is a list of names, below which someone has scrawled in red marker ‘THESE PATIENTS DID NOT MAKE IT!’

A medical worker sprays patients being discharged from the Island Clinic where the facility is preparing to release more than 50 survivors.

Ebola has killed nearly 2,000 people in Liberia, and is now growing exponentially because the sick often remain at home where they spread the virus through bodily fluids. There are simply not enough ambulances to drive across the rutted roads into the countryside where the disease is flourishing. Even when ambulances can reach people, the fear of being transported to a facility where more than half the patients leave in body bags keeps some from going. All photos by Jerome Delay / AP Photo