The District Medical Team have postponed the trip to Ribbi, so I spend the day in Moyamba. With our doors fully open for business we start getting a steady number of suspect case referrals to the Centre.

The first is a young teacher who seems to have Ebola, but is in the early stages and not too ill. The second is a confused older woman who it is difficult to get any history from and the diagnosis is less likely. She has a nasty wound on her foot and we test her glucose to check for diabetes. She is extremely hyperglycaemic, but we have no insulin to treat her.

I have asked the Command and Control to be our air traffic controllers and keep us notified of any ambulances, but inevitably this does not happen and the day quickly becomes chaotic. We are taken by complete surprise when two ambulances turn up in quick succession. It is the second that causes the greatest problem.

I am told that there is a woman in the ambulance. I have no further details, no name, no symptoms, no reason for referral, no notes, just a Landcruiser ambulance parked ominously outside waiting in the mid-afternoon heat with its red lights flashing.

We have only just finished with the preceding case, so we quickly start preparing once again. The news then arrives that it is not a woman, but a child with a nurse in PPE in the back of the ambulance. The child is about ten years old the security guard informs me. Her mother has Ebola.

Our watsan team head to the ambulance docking station and after careful decontamination carry the child into the suspect ward on a stretcher. Meanwhile, I dress in PPE with two of the nurses to follow on with clinical assessment.

When I enter, the four watsans are standing waiting patiently, one at each corner of a stretcher lying on the floor next to a bed. On the adult stretcher lies a tiny two-year-old girl, silent with fear. There are now seven of us in full PPE in this aircraft hanger of a tent. It is so overpowering, so unequal.

I pick her up in my arms. I know that there is a risk she may pull my goggles, but she is so small and afraid that I cannot resist. She clings to me with the reflex of a toddler, and the stoicism of an African child. She is beautiful.

I ask the accompanying nurse about the child. She knows little. We have no name, no parent, no record, no history. The nurse had been at the primary health care clinic when the child was brought in as an orphan. The story was that her mother had Ebola, and that her mother was here in our hospital. The child has some symptoms, but only what the nurse has witnessed in the last hour.

I can’t believe how messed up this all is. We know nothing about this child. She is abandoned in the red zone of an Ebola centre. Her mother may be one of the patients in the confirmed ward next door, but we can’t take her in because we don't know if she has Ebola, and if we do then she certainly will.

The story is so unreliable that she probably shouldn't even be here, but there appears to be nowhere else for her to go, and no-one else who will take her with her deadly infection connection. She is a pariah, an Ebola outcast.

We give her some paracetamol and vitamins crushed in some honey. Then some milk. She is not particularly unwell, but will need full-time feeding and caring, and our red zone dashes do not allow for this.

We have two suspect cases now in the suspect ward, but only one who is alert. I ask the teacher if he could help us - to come to the fence to tell us if she needs our help. We move her cot to the walkway end of the tent so we can see her from the green zone.

I am tired from my night on call but still have to sort the safe burial for Ibrahim. The law of the country is that everyone must be buried safety (sprayed with chlorine and put in a body bag) within 24 hours of death. Each evening I listen to the list of safe burials in Moyamba, mostly old people and children under five. These will be deaths unrelated to Ebola, but in this national emergency there is a blitzkrieg approach.

Mr Bundu is the head of the safe burial team and he takes me to the Ebola cemetery. It is a beautiful place, cut out of the jungle on the edge of town. Sunlight dances through the canopy illuminating the neat rows of grave markers. A team of 11 grave diggers prepare more graves, including Ibrahim’s. They dig 8ft down rather than the usual 6ft. Deep silos for these toxic Ebola corpses.

I hope that it will remain as a memorial when all this is over. Not just for those who have lost their lives, buried where they died, but as a reminder to be vigilant in future to avoid the tragic mistakes that we made this time in not preventing the epidemic. Lest we forget.

MORE BLOG POSTS FROM PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT