Sierra Leone nurses strike over Ebola hazard allowances

Nurses at a public hospital in northern Sierra Leone have gone on a strike to protest the government’s failure to pay them hazard allowance for dealing with Ebola patients. Around 30 nurses at the Mabenteh Hospital in the town of Makeni said they had stopped working since Wednesday due to “the non-payment of risk allowance” by the government for the month of November. “We are not going to attend to any patients who are already admitted and will not accept any new cases until we are paid,” a spokesman for the nurses, Henry Conteh, said, adding, “The matter is serious and needs to be settled urgently.”