New stats show there is an average of five people being infected with the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone every hour, with a warning this rate could double by the end of October.

Charity Save the Children says an estimated 765 new cases of Ebola were reported in the country last week.

The organisation is warning that the demand for hospital beds and nurses to help deal with the outbreak 'far outstrips' supply.

Rob MacGillivray, Save the Children's country director in Sierra Leone, says that "children, more than anyone, are suffering painful, anonymous and undignified deaths at home. It's very difficult at this stage to even give accurate figures on the number of children who are dying from Ebola, as monitoring systems cannot keep pace with the outbreak."

Meanwhile, United Airlines has confirmed that an American man diagnosed with Ebola in Texas flew on two of its flights.

Doctors say it is unlikely the man, who became infected in Liberia, passed the disease to any other passengers because he had no symptoms and would not have been contagious.

America's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Director Doctor Thomas Frieden told a press conference US hospitals are well prepared to handle patients with Ebola, and assured the public the virus should not pose the same threat in the US as it does in Africa.

The virus causes a range of symptoms including fever, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding.

The outbreak has infected 6,574 people across five countries and killed 3,091, according to the World Health Organisation.