Not less than 400 healthcare workers treating Ebola virus patients in a Sierra Leone abandoned their duties Wednesday as a way of protesting a denial of hazard pay. UPI reports that about 60 patients have been left untreated at the clinic. Read more:
Employees at the Bandajuma clinic, operated by the Doctors Without Borders organization and the only Ebola treatment center in southern Sierra Leone, say they were promised a weekly “hazard payment” equivalent to $100 by the government, and have not received it.
About 60 patients have been left untreated at the clinic, which may close it the strike by nurses, cleaners and porters continues, the BBC reported Wednesday.
In neighboring Mali, two people have died of the Ebola virus thus far. The second case is a nurse who treated a man who arrived from Guinea to the Malian capital of Bamako and died Tuesday. The death came after the World Health Organization released 25 of about 100 people from isolation after coming in contact with the first case, a child who died Oct. 24.
Mali is now anxiously awaiting an all-clear signal, the British newspaper The Guardian said.
