The global death toll in West Africa caused by the Ebola epidemic continues to soar.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the death toll has risen to 7,588 out of 19,497 confirmed cases since the plague emerged in Guinea one year ago.

The virus is still spreading intensely in the north and west of Sierra Leone as 315 new confirmed cases were reported in the week to December 21, including 115 cases in the capital Freetown.

"The neighboring district of Port Loko experienced a surge in new cases, reporting 92 confirmed cases compared with 56 the previous week," the WHO said, according to Reuters.

In addition, 156 confirmed cases were recorded in Guinea over the same period of time, making this "the highest weekly case incidence reported by the country in this outbreak," the WHO said.

"This largely due to a surge in cases in the south-eastern district of Kissidougou, which reported 58 confirmed cases - one-third of cases reported in the country in the past week."

Peter Piot, a scientist who helped to discover the virus in 1976, predicts that the Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015.

In other news, research shows that Ebola survivors may hold the cure to the deadly virus outbreak in West Africa, which has killed 7,000 people and counting.

In order to combat the disease, Vanderbilt University researcher Dr. James Crowe is using the blood of an Ebola survivor to create new, potent drugs by extracting the proteins that helped them overcome the virus, Reuters reports. He received a blood sample in November from Dr. Rick Sacra, a University of Massachusetts physician who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia.

Sacra, a medical Christian missionary with SIM USA, explained that doctors are working to extract the antibodies, immune system proteins that seek and destroy foreign invaders like viruses or bacteria, from his blood.

"They can take antibodies they find in my blood and map them out. They are looking for the ones that are most important in neutralizing the virus," Sacra told Reuters.

Several leading doctors in the science community have also embraced the idea of using survivors' antibodies in the fight against Ebola. In addition, Crowe works with academic and corporate partners at Emory University to develop and test human antibodies from Ebola survivors.