Sierra Leone has shot past Liberia as the country with the highest number of Ebola cases.  But the effort to contain the virus and shrink the number of infections is being undermined by turmoil in the West African nation’s health systems and clinics run by outside groups.

The Junior Doctors’ Association will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to continue a strike Freetown’s Connaught Hospital, the main facility in the capital.  They walked out on Monday in protest over inadequate equipment to fight the Ebola.  This follows the deaths of three doctors in two days.

“We have decided to withhold our services until proper and more conducive atmosphere is created for us to continue our work,” went the statement from Junior Doctors Association.

One young doctor told foreign reporters 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,” she added, “which is very disheartening.”

The latest figures from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) show that Sierra Leone for the first time had the most confirmed infection in the West African Ebola Epidemic – 7,798 cases, compared with Liberia's 7,719.  Liberia still has the worst death toll.  Out of all infections, the Ebola virus has now killed 6,331 people – the vast majority of whom were in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

The Sierra Leone government accuses the British of mismanaging an Ebola treatment center, by handing it over to an inexperienced NGO.  The British military built the 80-bed Kerry Town Ebola center, but then turned it over to the charity “Save the Children”.  Sierra Leone says only about a third of those 80-beds are filled, despite the virus’ increasing speed. 

“That is something we must all accept, hands up, and say the Brits got it wrong with Kerry Town, handing over that facility to Save The Children who have never run an Ebola facility,” said Palo Conteh, head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola Response Center.

Save the Children says its inexperience is the issue, and it always planned a ramped response in order to get up to speed without being overwhelmed.

“We have never run frontline health services at this scale," said Save The Children's Global Humanitarian Director Michael Von Bertele.  “We set out a plan that involved us maybe taking just two or three patients in the first week, while we understood the complexity of working in a new environment with a new disease, and that is what we did.”