According to the World Health Organization the Ebola outbreak's death toll has reached beyond 3,000 in West Africa. This high figure in deaths among adults has left a huge number of children who have lost a parent to the epidemic.
As the number of deaths caused by the outbreak rises, the number of children who will be left as orphans will also spike. According to the United Nation's Children's Organization, over 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have lost a parent or both parents to Ebola. Thus, a huge so many children in these stricken countries need not only medical attention but psychological and financial help as well.
Researchers, after extrapolating data gathered from previous statistics, have said that if the outbreak will continue to wreak havoc in West Africa, there will be more and more children who will be left orphans. Because of this, there is greater pressure among health workers to find the most effective diagnostic, preventive and treatment means to counter the spread of the virus.
Recent statistics show that children as young as three years old have become orphans due to the outbreak. Support for these orphaned children have become another concern that requires immediate attention. The UNICEF has already sent word that volunteer workers who will tend to these orphaned children are in demand on top of the health workers who are working against the spread of the disease.
Due to the economic state of the stricken communities, most of the orphaned children have nothing left to support themselves. While some, like an 11-year-old Liberian girl, find shelter among extended family, most of the children have nowhere to stay.
Most of the children are found near the hospitals where there parents have died and some are found in their communities. There is then a need to accurately identify who the orphans are and to track them in order for them to be given shelter and for them to undergo the screening as they may have contracted the virus from their parents.
