SA healthcare workers to join Ebola fight

SOUTH African doctors and nurses are being recruited to work in Sierra Leone as part of the government's response to the Ebola outbreak there, according to the non-profit organisation Right to Care.

Business Day, 9 December 2014

Ebola has affected more than 17 500 people and killed at least 6 100 since the latest outbreak began in March, according to the World Health Organisation.

The epidemic appears to have stabilised in Liberia and Guinea, but remains out of control in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown and in Port Loko. Right to Care CEO Ian Sanne said the South African healthcare professionals would support Sierra Leone's health sector and gain valuable experience in dealing with viral haemorrhagic fevers. Those skills would prove useful should Ebola or related diseases such as Congo Fever occur in SA.

Right to Care is running the recruitment drive on behalf of the Department of Health, which previously said it needed R250m to respond effectively to the threat of Ebola. Prof Sanne said there had been a "lacklustre" response to the call for donations, but the need for South African healthcare professionals was greater than that for South African money. A fifth of the 50 doctors Sierra Leone had at the start of the outbreak have died, according to the global disease monitoring initiative ProMED-mail. So far only R40m has been raised for the battle against Ebola from the South African government and the private sector together.

More than R30m came from the Department of Health. Right to Care is seeking 30 doctors and nurses willing to spend two months in Sierra Leone working at treatment centres the UK government is setting up. They will be returned to SA for treatment should they contract Ebola, which the government has agreed to finance. Prof Sanne said the hope is that increasing capacity to treat more patients will reduce exposure to other community members. SA is also providing mobile laboratories to Sierra Leone, staffed by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases. South African doctors working for international charity Médecins Sans Frontières have also spent time in the region.