AFP | Freetown November 26,
Burial workers in eastern Sierra Leone were
sacked today after snatching Ebola victims from a
mortuary and dumping their bodies in the street in
a pay dispute.
The workers, who were on a one-day strike over
non-payment of risk allowances, left at least a
dozen corpses around the public hospital in the
city of Kenema, once one of the epicentres of the
epidemic.
"I am disappointed that they displayed the bodies
because of the quest for money," Paul Conteh,
head of the National Ebola Response Centre, told
reporters in the capital Freetown.
"They ignored the dignity and respect for the
dead. I am not against them withholding their
services but this is unacceptable," Contech said.
Bodies were also abandoned outside the offices of
hospital managers, according to officials and
witnesses, although it was not clear how long
they were left lying around.
Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids
and the risk of infection is particularly high with
the corpse of someone who has recently died.
"Six or seven bodies were laid out in nearby
streets in full view of the public," one Kenema
resident told AFP.
"Some of the strikers were dressed in protective
gear and the corpses were in body bags but they
had a disturbing smell. Three of the bodies were
those of children."
Witnesses described how the strikers, thought to
have numbered around 30 blocked an army van
which had come to pick up the bodies before
soldiers persuaded the protesters to stand down.
More than 1,200 Sierra Leoneans have died in the
worst Ebola outbreak on record since it spread in
May from Guinea to the country's eastern region,
which includes Kenema.
The government, which had a fund set aside to
pay risk allowances, has launched an investigation
into why the cash did not reach the burial teams
for more than a month.
The strike follows similar industrial action earlier
this month at a clinic near Bo, the only Ebola
treatment centre in the country's southern region.
The epidemic has killed around 5,500 people in
west Africa this year, almost all in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone.

But Africa why?

we live in a very funny continent

jacabi:
But Africa why?

Africa is really funny.on a lighter mood,u shed be thanking God for being the first to comment.