Ebola: Liberian nurses strike over lack of protective equipment

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Nurses at Monrovia's John F Kennedy hospital say they will not return to work until they get protective suits and better pay

John Tugbeh, spokesman for the strikers at John F Kennedy hospital in Monrovia, said the nurses would not return to work until they were supplied with personal protective equipment (PPE), the hazardous material-style suits which guard against infectious diseases.

"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 hospital closed temporarily in July after the infection and deaths of an unspecified number of health workers who had been treating Ebola patients.

"We need proper equipment to work with [and] we need better pay because we are going to risk our lives," Tugbeh said...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/ebola-liberian-nurses-strike-lack-protective-equipment

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

Ebola survivors: Hospital staff exposed in Africa

The hospital in Liberia where three American aid workers got sick with Ebola has been overwhelmed by a surge in patients and doesn't have enough hazard suits and other supplies to keep doctors and nurses safe, a missionary couple told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The latest infection - of Rick Sacra, a doctor who wasn't even working in the hospital's Ebola unit - shows just how critical protective gear is to containing the deadly epidemic, and how charities alone can't handle the response, they said...

... About 250 staffers at the hospital use thousands of disposable protective suits each week, but that's not enough to fully protect the doctors and nurses who must screen people entering the emergency room or treat patients outside the 50-bed Ebola isolation unit, they said.

"We don't have enough personal protective safety equipment to adequately be able to safely diagnose if a patient has Ebola. So they are putting themselves at risk," David Writebol said...

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/03/6674205/missionary-infected-with-ebola.html

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

Charity seeking to buy 20,000 Ebola suits for health workers

Leprosy Mission says €5 will cover cost of buying and shipping one suit to affected area

... According to the World Health Organisation, health workers are at higher risk of infection during an outbreak. An unprecedented number of medical staff in West Africa are infected with Ebola.

To date, over 240 healthcare workers have contracted the disease in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone and more than 120 have died. The WHO cited shortages of personal protective equipment as one of the causes of the high proportion of healthcare workers infected....

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/charity-seeking-to-buy-20-000-ebola-suits-for-health-workers-1.1909425

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