FREETOWN (Reuters) – Two doctors died of Ebola in Sierra Leone on Friday, a government and a hospital source said, bringing to 10 the number of doctors killed in the country by the virus.
The worst Ebola outbreak on record has torn through some of West Africa’s weakest health systems, killing nearly 350 medical personnel, including 106 in Sierra Leone, which is still rebuilding from years of war in the 1990s.
“We are devastated at this haemorrhaging of our healthcare workers,” a senior health ministry official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
There was no immediate comment from authorities but the sources named the two dead doctors as Dr Dauda Koroma and Dr Thomas Rogers.
It is not clear how the men were infected as they were not working on the frontline in an Ebola clinic.
While addressing parliament earlier on Friday, President Ernest Bai Koroma had called medical personnel fighting Ebola the country’s “greatest patriots”.
Sierra Leone has pledged to pay the families of all medical staff who die battling Ebola $5,000 in compensation.
The latest figures from the World Health Organisation showed Ebola has killed nearly 6,200 people, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, since it was confirmed in the region earlier this year.
(Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Diane Craft)