MONROVIA, Liberia — Many health-care workers on the front lines of the battle against Ebola in Liberia ignored calls Monday to strike over poor pay and working conditions, officials and charity workers said. Alphonso Weah, head of the government's 150-bed Island Clinic in the capital Monrovia, said workers decided to come in after appeals from the general public. "We have agreed, collectively as a community, to go back to work," Weah told a popular radio talk show.
But George Williams, the secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association of Liberia, told Reuters the government was pressuring workers by trying to shame them and offering money. More than 4,000 people have died of the viral hemorrhagic fever in West Africa, mostly in Liberia. The strike was supposed to have started at midnight Sunday, but Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters that most health-care facilities are open and staffed. "We have done all we can and will continue to do all we can so that patients continue to receive the care they need."
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