Junior doctors at the hospital in Sierra Leone where British Ebola survivor Will Pooley is working have gone on strike in protest over inadequate equipment to fight the epidemic ravaging the impoverished country.

The action at Freetown’s Connaught hospital follows the deaths of three doctors in two days, with figures showing Sierra Leone has overtaken Liberia as the country with the most infections.

One of the three doctors, Tom Rogers, was a general surgeon at the hospital.

“We have decided to withhold our services until a proper and more conducive atmosphere is created for us to continue our work,” the Junior Doctors Association (JDA) said.

The action does not affect the Ebola isolation ward where Pooley works and which is run by the British doctor Dr Oliver Johnson as part of the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership.

The association did not say how many doctors were joining the action, but patients were reporting significant disruption as senior consultants headed to the wards to cover their work.

One junior doctor told Agence France-Press that she and her colleagues were depressed and “losing courage to turn up for work” because of the lack of equipment.

“We are also worried over the deaths of our colleagues, which is very disheartening,” she told AFP.

The weakness of the health system in Sierra Leone had already been identified as one of the causes for the continuing Ebola crisis. Before the outbreak, the country had just 120 doctors. The death of 10 of them means the country has lost 8% of its doctors in four months.

Sierra Leone’s chief medical officer said he was baffled by the deaths of three doctors last weekend. Dr Brima Kargbo said it was possible the doctors became infected from patients who had not declared they had been in contact with Ebola victims.

“The most affected persons are the healthcare workers or those who are taking care of persons with the virus,” he said.

The doctors say they do not have enough respiratory machines and vital signs monitors and that intensive care facilities are lacking in an Italian-built treatment centre in the west of the city, where some of them are due to be sent.

A source at the JDA said the union would meet on Tuesday to decide whether to continue the action.

The World Health Organisation published figures on Monday showing that Sierra Leone had registered the highest number of cases in west Africa for the first time, with 7,798 compared with 7,719 in Liberia.

The health ministry’s latest figures show there were 58 new cases on Monday, more than half of them in Freetown.

Sierra Leone has recorded about 1,742 Ebola deaths this year.