Striking nurses in Ebola-hit Liberia are demanding higher salaries and improved protection from infection.
John Tugbeh, spokesman for the strikers at the Monrovia hospital treating most of Liberia’s Ebola patients, told reporters that the nurses will not return to work until they are provided with “personal protective equipment (PPE).”
“From the beginning of the Ebola outbreak we have not had any protective equipment to work with. As result, so many doctors got infected by the virus. We have to stay home until we get the PPEs,” Tugbeh said.
The biggest Ebola outbreak in history has already killed more than half of the estimated 3,000 people infected. Only around 10 percent of those who have not yet succumbed to the disease are expected to survive without the widespread availability of the as yet unapproved treatment, ZMapp.
ZMapp has proved 100 percent effective in curing monkeys infected with Viral Haemorrhagic Fever (Ebola) and at least three western health workers who have received the treatment have shown significant improvement. Yet calls for ZMapp to be made widely available in the countries most affected by the epidemic are yet to be answered.
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims Ebola could affect up to 20,000 people before it is brought under control.
