A WOMAN who visited Sierra Leone earlier this year has returned to help teams battling the continuing Ebola outbreak.

Littlemore resident Caroline Kassell flew back to the West African country nine days ago to work with child protection teams that help children orphaned as a result of Ebola.

The 38-year-old World Vision crisis relief worker said that the fight against Ebola remained as important as it was a year ago.

The Oxford Brookes University graduate said: “There has been a lot of progress made in Sierra Leone in the battle against Ebola. Of the 14 districts in the country, only three have active cases of Ebola.”

Since the outbreak last year, there have been 8,690 confirmed cases and at least 3,582 recorded deaths.

On her trip to Sierra Leone, Miss Kassell will also work with teams of people to ensure that the bodies of the dead are disposed of safely.

Her trip to Sierra Leone comes at a time where Christian charity World Vision has staged an exhibition in the centre of Bonn Square.

In the display members of the public can walk through a mocked-up hut, modelled on a home of a single mother-of-six in Sierra Leone.

The woman, called Miatta, lost three of her children shortly after giving birth.

Passers by can walk through the hut and experience what it is like to live in Sierra Leone.

World Vision is hoping that the hut, which has been in Bonn Square since July 12, will inspire people to sponsor children in the grief-stricken country for 75p-per-day.

Spokeswoman for the charity, Brenda Yu, said: “With the ongoing Ebola crisis it’s more important than ever for people to sponsor a child.”

Miss Kassell said: “Sierra Leone was one of the poorest countries in the world before the Ebola crisis, and since then the Ebola virus has compounded the issues facing the people.

“Farmers haven’t been able to make money because markets haven’t been running as they should be.

“Therefore aid is so incredibly important to the children of Sierra Leone.”

Miss Kassell said she also feels that, to a certain extent, the Ebola crisis in West Africa had been forgotten by the British people.

She added: “I think other issues have come into the headlines.

“We’ve had other humanitarian crises, like the earthquake in Nepal.

“People forget that Ebola is still here and needs to be tackled.”

Last week it was announced that two vaccines trialled at Oxford University were being tested on people in Senegal, West Africa, in the hope that it will immunise the population from Ebola for good.