When Australian development worker Carly Learson met Hawa Musa, the Liberian mother was devastated. Fifteen out of 25 people who had rented her small house in Liberia had just died from Ebola.

The woman told Ms Learson that her husband had also died, she had lost a child and now no one would rent her rooms in fear that they too would die of the virus that so violently swept through the country in 2014.

‘‘What happens to these people now?’’ asks Carly Learson, who has been in Liberia since August.

"In some of the places it's really awful," says Ms Learson, who works for the United Nations Development Program. "They have lost so many people and the people who have died [have] a huge impact on their entire community."

Hawa Musa's story is one of hundreds Australian workers have described as they fight an unpredictable and deadly disease 15,500 kilometres away from home.