A hospital in Sierra Leone that was closed because of a dispute over risk allowance pay for treating Ebola patients has reopened after staff called off their strike.



About 130 nurses and doctors downed tools on 24 December at the Magbenteh community hospital, leaving Makeni, the fourth largest city in the country, without any maternity cover. It usually sees about 30 pregnant women a day. Staff said the government had failed to pay the $45 a week hazard payment since September despite aid flooding into the country.

Henry Conteh, representative of the staff, told the Guardian that the district Ebola coordinator had met the payments “on the spot” after publicity both locally and internationally. “It was pressure from the media. Pregnant women went crazy and went to radio and TV. The president heard about it and that was when we got our payments.”

Conteh said back payments were being made for November and December and that it had also been promised funds to pay for regular salaries.

The charity that runs the hospital is running out of money. Over the past three months, the Swiss Sierra Leone Development Foundation has paid only half of staff’s basic pay. Its founder, Harald Pfeiffer, has appealed for aid since the Ebola outbreak began and has been promised a grant of $350,000 from the government. It is also waiting on a consignment of two containers of food and medical supplies organised by two radiographers in Dublin.

Figures released by the UN Ebola mission Unmeer at the end of December showed signs that the incidence of the disease in Sierra Leone is no longer increasing, although infection levels remain a concern.

There were 979 cases reported in the three weeks up to 28 December. In the same period, Guinea and Liberia together reported less than half that number (438).

In his New Year’s Day address, the president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, said schools would reopen soon, although it is unlikely that this will be on a national level.

Liberia has already announced plans to reopen schools next month. The latest figures show that infection rates in the country have dropped to just over four cases a day. Liberia had no confirmed Ebola cases on 31 December and 91 cases in the three weeks up to 28 December.