Isolated from the outside world in a medical centre in Ebola-hit southern Guinea, victims of one of the deadliest viruses known to mankind wait listlessly for the merciful release of death.

The makeshift clinic in Gueckedou, a market city of 220,000 people near the Liberia and Sierra Leone borders, is on the front line of Guinea‘s increasingly desperate struggle to contain one of the worst outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever in history.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, commonly known by its French initials MSF, has set up two corrugated iron buildings in a tent village, currently with 20 beds, and a capacity for 50 patients.