A smartphone game where players aim to wipe out humanity with incurable diseases has soared in popularity during the Ebola outbreak and is now dominating the iPhone download charts.

The app, called Plague Inc, was designed by a British app designer and hit the number one spot for paid-for apps in the UK last week. It has gained almost a million more players in the last two weeks as the spread of Ebola virus has claimed more victims.

The game is a strategy game, where players choose a virus to infect “patient zero”. The aim of the game is to "bring about the end of human history by evolving a deadly, global Plague whilst adapting against everything humanity can do to defend itself".

Players win “DNA points” as their virus spreads and is made stronger by mutating or becoming resistant to drugs.

Users can even customise their disease, with many now choosing to name it after the virus that has claimed more than 4,000 lives in West Africa.

The company says the games is a mix of 'high strategy and terrifyingly realistic simulation'

The point of the game is to wipe out humanity

The app, which costs 99p on the iPhone, was launched in 2012 by James Vaughan, who set up his company, Ndemic Creations, to design it.

He told the tech website Modojo that he designed the game because he “really wanted to play a mobile strategy game but could not find one.

See the Ebola outbreak mapped Show all 7 1 /7 See the Ebola outbreak mapped See the Ebola outbreak mapped 25 March 2014 This outbreak of the Ebola virus first emerged in the Guéckédou region of Guinea, at a crossroads with both Liberia and Sierra Leone See the Ebola outbreak mapped 31 March On 31 March the WHO confirmed the outbreak was now international, spreading first into Liberia's northern-most Lofa region See the Ebola outbreak mapped 27 May The virus spread to Sierra Leone at the end of May - just as agencies were hoping the worst was over See the Ebola outbreak mapped 27 July In Sierra Leone the virus boomed, and then it spread to Nigeria when the Liberian diplomat Patrick Sawyer flew from Monrovia to Lagos See the Ebola outbreak mapped 9 August The Nigeria cases sparked fears around the world, and there have now been deaths in Spain and Saudi Arabia involving people who had travelled to West Africa. The numbers of cases continue to rise See the Ebola outbreak mapped 17-20 September In mid-September, Senegal confirmed its first case linked to the Ebola outbreak, a development the WHO described as a top priority emergency. Numbers of cases continued to grow exponentially in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, as experts warned they could number one million by January if not contained See the Ebola outbreak mapped 8 October Two cases of Ebola have now been reported in the US and Europe - the first times the virus has been contracted among health workers outside Africa

"I realised there was a huge gap in the market and decided to fill it," he said.