Ebola outbreak: Liberia health workers threaten to strike Monday

UPDATE  Liberia largely averts health worker strike that would have severely hampered Ebola response

ASSOCIATED PRESS            Updated: October 13, 2014 - 11:45 AM

By: JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH , Associated Press

MONROVIA, Liberia — Health workers reported for duty at Liberia's hospitals on Monday, largely defying calls for a strike that could have further hampered the country's ability to respond to the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

Nurses and other health workers — though not doctors — had threatened to strike if they did not receive the higher hazard pay they had been promised by the government. That would have made the already difficult care of Ebola patients even harder, since the bulk of the staff at clinics and hospitals is made of up of Liberia's nurses, physician assistants and community health workers.

"Considering the situation in which we find ourselves we don't think strike is the way forward," said Dr. Jerry Brown, head of ELWA2, a treatment center on the outskirts of Monrovia. "Because if we strike now, more and more patients will remain in the communities. And as more and more patients remain in the communities, there will be more new cases and there will be a setback."

"Things are back to normal, and we are working," said Dr. Atai Omoruto, a Ugandan doctor heading up an Ebola treatment center at Island Clinic in the western suburbs of Monrovia, Liberia's capital. She said all nurses and physician assistants were at work. Other hospitals also said all their employees were at work, and health workers could be seen lining up outside one clinic near the capital to get in.

But at one government hospital in Tubmanburg, 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the capital, only some nurses and physician assistants were reporting to work Monday, said Dr. Gobee Logan, the doctor in charge there.

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CBC News                                           Oct. 13, 2014       

MONROVIA (REUTERS) --Thousands of Liberian health-care workers are set to begin an indefinite strike at midnight on Monday which could undermine the country's effort to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus and leave several hundred patients without care.

Health workers in the West African nation threatened to abandon hundreds of patients in Ebola treatment units, clinics and hospitals if demands for better incentives, working conditions and protective equipment were not met.

Health-care workers in Liberia have threatened to stop treating Ebola patients, and are demanding better hazard pay, but many nurses showed up for work Monday. (2Tango/Reuters)

A meeting to resolve their grievances on Oct. 10 ended in a deadlock with the government refusing the meet their demands, said George Williams, secretary general of the National Health Workers Association of Liberia.

"The government of Liberia has not changed their posture. They do not want to engage us so that we can talk," Williams said. "Time is running out, by 1200 midnight on Monday morning, we will be starting the go-slow action."

Liberia's deputy health minister Matthew Flomo said the government was not aware of health workers planning to strike.

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-liberia-health-workers-threaten-to-strike-monday-1.2796643