Tessa and Joel Sanborn adopted a 5-year-old son, Devine, but he’s still in an orphanage in Liberia, waiting indefinitely as the state of emergency
continues over Ebola.

Devine’s two younger siblings, also adopted, are already in the U.S. with the Sanborns while the number of children in West African orphanages who’ve lost parents increases because of the virus, according to the MinneapolisStarTribune.

Patricia Anglin is executive director and founder of Acres of Hope, a children’s aid organization in Liberia that houses many orphans, including Devine.

Based in Liberia, Anglin is in the U.S. trying to raise emergency funds for food and supplies to keep her organization going. Adoptions are a small part of the organization’s services, but they help fund it, she said. With adoptions on hold, she said she and her staff stopped taking a salary. She has been talking to schools and philanthropists in the U.S.

Just outside Seattle in Maple Valley, Washington, other families have organized a food and supply drive at local restaurant for Devine’s orphanage.

About 7,000 children in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or both parents to Ebola, according to Anglin and other aid workers, MinneapolisStarTribune reports.

The number of children from Sierra Leone adopted by U.S. families ranged from 33 in 2013 to six in 2009.

Liberia was once an important partner with U.S. adoption agencies, but Ebola complicated things. There were just 12 adoptions from Liberia by Americans in 2013, down from 353 in 2006.

Guinea was never a large source of children adopted by Americans, according to the report.