THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Just as with any other disaster, natural or man-made, the Ebola plague in West Africa has left thousands of orphaned children as their parents died of the disease. Unlike other disasters, surviving family and friends turn away from these children because of the disease that made them orphans.

Ebola has been wretched for children. More than 3,500 have been infected and at least 1,200 have died, United Nations officials estimate. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the most-afflicted countries, have shut down schools in an attempt to check the virus, and legions of young people are now being drafted into hard labor by their impoverished parents. Little boys who should be sitting in a classroom are breaking rocks by the side of the road; little girls struggle under gigantic loads of bananas on their heads. This was always true to some degree, but social workers say there are more children, especially teenagers, on the streets than ever before, which could lead to an increase in crime and adolescent pregnancies. When the schools do reopen, there will probably be many vacant seats.

But the worst off, by far, are the Ebola orphans. The United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef, says that across the region there may be 10,000 of them. Many are stigmatized and shunned by their own communities.

“If there’s an earthquake or a war, and you lose a mother or a father, an aunt will take care of you,” said Roeland Monasch, head of Unicef’s office in Sierra Leone. “But this is different. These children aren’t being taken in by extended family. This isn’t like the AIDS orphans.”

People in hard-hit Ebola areas see children as mini time bombs. They do not wash their hands very often, they constantly touch people, they break all the Ebola rules. Something as simple as changing a diaper becomes a serious risk because the virus is spread through bodily fluids.

“Younger children are believed to be more contagious,” Mr. Monasch said.

Even if that is not true, the stigma remains, and many families have been reluctant to absorb children from Ebola-stricken households because of worries that those children might sicken their own.

And to compound the tragedy, those who offer to take the children all too often are suspected of less than humanitarian reasons for doing so.