Doctor Sekou Kanneh speaks during an interview with Reuters TV in the Hastings ebola treatment centre at a neighbourhood in Freetown, December 21, 2014. Conditions at Kanneh's treatment centre, the only Ebola unit in the country run by local staff, contrast to the purpose-built facilities where foreign volunteers who have flocked to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work. Kanneh has received no official training to treat the virus that has killed over 7,000 people in West Africa. Still, he works up to four hour shifts in the stifling heat of the red zone, a ward where healthcare workers have direct contact with the highly contagious Ebola patients. In contrast, workers in foreign-run facilities are well trained and well-funded; with limits on the time spent in the red zones to not more than two hours. Picture taken December 21, 2014
. REUTERS/Baz Ratner (SIERRA LEONE - Tags: HEALTH POLITICS)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comFREETOWN, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Doctors across Sierra Leone began an indefinite strike on Monday to protest low pay and lack of benefits, leaving dozens of patients in hospital waiting rooms in need of care.The doctors said they lost between 20% to 40% of their take-home pay in May after the government ended their monthly COVID-19 risk allowance and a tax break they had received with the onset of the pandemic.They are also demanding fuel allowances of 45 litres per week, which they said has been promised but not delivered for years.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comDoctors also staged strikes in 2018 and 2020 in the West Africa country, protesting low pay, poor working conditions and unpaid bonuses. Sierra Leone has some of the worst health outcomes in the world.The government said it has met the doctors' demands and that salaries would be increased in September. Fuel vouchers will also be given out weekly, said health minister Austin Demby."It is very, very difficult to understand why a strike is needed," Demby said.But the backlog of extra pay due since May has not been addressed, and doctors don't trust the fuel allowance system, said Edries Tejan, president of the Medical and Dental Association."The doctors are not convinced that particular system they are proposing is going to work," he said.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Umaru Fofana; Editing by Nellie Peyton and Grant McCoolOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Sierra Leone doctors strike over pay, fuel allowances.