MONROVIA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization’s representative in Liberia pleaded on Monday with healthcare workers on the front line of an Ebola epidemic not to stage industrial action in their bid for better terms and hazard pay.
Nearly 2,000 people have died from Ebola in Liberia out of at least 3,696 infected. The West African state is at the center of an epidemic that has killed more than 3,400 people in that country and its neighbors Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The National Health Workers Association of Liberia is planning a go-slow from Friday because money promised by the government has not been paid to their satisfaction, the union said last week.
The union, which represents thousands of health workers, also questions clauses in the contracts its members are to sign with the government and its partners.
“My appeal to all the health workers is that you have been so brave to go and work in the ETU’s (Ebola Treatment Units). This is not the moment to compromise all that you have achieved,” Peter Graaff, the U.N. health agency’s Liberia representative, told a news conference.
“Going slow means that those who want to work will have to work too hard and then put themselves at risk. Going slow means putting the lives for those you care for unnecessarily at risk,” he said, adding that there should be a negotiated solution.
It is not clear whether all the union members would abide by the union’s call for a go-slow.
Ebola, a hemorrhagic virus, has taken a heavy toll on health workers and damaged health care systems in impoverished West African countries that were already fragile.
In the United States, the fifth American to contract Ebola in West Africa arrived for treatment on Monday while the first patient diagnosed with the deadly virus on U.S. soil was in critical condition at a Dallas hospital.
(Reporting by James Giahyue; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Mark Heinrich)