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imageMONROVIA: Heavily pregnant when she died, Fatimah Jakemah is lifted unceremoniously by experts in biohazard suits and zipped into a body bag, another practically anonymous victim of the world's worst ever Ebola outbreak.

There isn't time to ask about her life story or reflect on the family she may have left behind as the Red Cross team disinfects everything she might have touched and moves onto the next house.

"She was 20 years old and this was her first time getting pregnant," says Gaimu Paul, one of Fatimah's neighbours in Banjor, a slum on the outskirts of Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

"When she got sick, the neighbours fled the area and no one knows where they have gone."

Paul says Fatimah spent days shouting for help before her cries eventually went silent.

"She wanted drink, food, but we were afraid to go closer. Whenever you go close to an Ebola patient to help, the community rejects you."

In the centre of the west African Ebola outbreak, there is no dignity in death, no farewell, no funeral -- just body bags, biohazard suits and millions of gallons of disinfectant.

The tropical virus, transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has killed 2,100 people in four countries since the start of the year -- more than half of them in Liberia.

Amid fears that the country's already weak healthcare system could be close to collapse, teams of Red Cross workers have taken on the grim task of going door-to-door, picking up victims and sterilising their homes.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2014

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