Liberia’s National Health Workers Association is asking for an increase in the monthly risk fee paid to those brave workers treating Ebola cases.  The government is appealing to nurses and medical assistants not to go forward with a planned national strike as the epidemic rages on.

Right now, the risk fee is currently less than US$500 per month, and the staffers want that lifted to $700.  It would still be on top of the basic monthly salaries of between $200-$300.  But the government claims the scale of the West African Ebola Epidemic means it cannot pay medical staff more money.

The risk these workers are dealing with cannot be overstated.  Consider that two nurses, one in the US and one in Spain, were infected with Ebola – and that was in state of the art, modern facilities.  Now consider how the Liberians are treating Ebola patients in open-air tents and ramshackle buildings with dirt floors, with a fraction of the developed world’s budget and a perpetual shortage of supplies. 

More than 4,000 people have died of Ebola in this epidemic, and half of those fatalities occurred in Liberia.  And health workers are infected disproportionately, because of their closeness to the patients and the highly infectious nature of the Ebola virus.

If the National Health Workers Association goes on strike Tuesday, it could effectively shut down what little is being done to stop Ebola in Liberia.