apologised on Saturday for the high death toll
among the country’s healthcare workers who have
fought an Ebola outbreak, which has killed nearly
1,000 people in three countries.
Johnson Sirleaf pledged up to $18 million for the
Ebola fight, part of which will be given to health
workers to help with insurance and death benefits,
to fund more ambulances and to increase the
number of treatment centres.
“If we haven’t done enough so far, I have come to
apologise to you,” she told hundreds of health
workers who gathered at Monrovia’s City Hall for a
meeting with her government.
The West African Ebola outbreak, centred on
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the worst in
history. The World Health Organization (WHO) said
on Friday it is an international health emergency
that will likely continue spreading for months.
The disease has put a severe strain on the health
systems of affected states and governments have
responded with a range of measures, including the
declaration of national emergencies in Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, which confirmed seven
cases of Ebola in Lagos.
Ebola has reaped a high toll on health workers
who have acted as first responders. Liberia alone
has lost at least three doctors to the virus and 32
health workers.
Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry said a senior
physician had contracted the disease at the
Connaught referral hospital in the capital,
Freetown.
Dr. Modupeh Cole contracted the disease “after
treating a patient … who was later proved to have
the virus and died,” said ministry spokesman Sidi
Yahya Tunis.
Cole was taken to an Ebola treatment centre in
eastern Kailahun district, run by medical charity
Medecins Sans Frontieres, Tunis said.
He is the latest Sierra Leonean medical practitioner
to contract the virus. The country’s leading Ebola
doctor, Shek Umar Khan, died of the disease last
month and several nurses have died.
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