King Tom cemetery in Sierra Leone named after the long forgotten ruler clearly represents what the deadly Ebola epidemic did to this land.

The cemetery is hidden behind flaking grey walls in the suburbs of Freetown, the capital of the West African country of Sierra Leone.

For years the cemetery has been fighting a losing battle for space with a neighboring municipal refuse dump, from which piles of debris and garbage overflow onto the gravestones. But now, the tides have turned, as the cemetery overflows with the Ebola affected causalities in one of Sierra Leone’s worst epidemic outbreaks in decades.

There is special section for children in the cemetery and it has seen the rapid rise in size as a result of the Ebola outbreak.

Fiona Mclysaght who is the Country Director for Concern Worldwide says, “There are a staggering number of children being buried here on a weekly basis. Between the first and the fifth of January 156 children under the age of five were buried here in King Tom.”