Unconfirmed reports reaching Forum Newspaper SL states that since Dr. Nellie Belle was tested positive for COVID19, following administering treatments to patients who had travelled back home from Europe at her private Aspen Hospital, nurses working at the Ola During Children’s Hospital are being brought under constant pressure from the hospital authorities to forcefully undergo test, held in quarantine and to a large extent forced to accept that they are infected with the virus.
ODCH nurses and other health workers because of the case of Dr. Bell who serves as one of the facility’s paediatricians were wrongfully quarantined beyond the normal fourteen days period of isolation.
Most of them who proved healthy were allegedly tested positive for the virus, whiles others continue to be quarantined on orders of hospital authorities.
According to family sources from one of the nurses held in isolation has lost her aging mother due to stress and was buried whiles her daughter is strictly kept under quarantine by hospital authorities and the COVID19 Emergency Operation Centre.
Human rights groups and civil society organization monitoring rights issues surrounding the COVID19 pandemic containment process in the country have so far not register concerns on the violations of the rights of healthy medical workers who are placed under quarantine.
Meanwhile rumors making the rounds are that the Ministry of Health and Sanitation through ODCH hospital authorities have decided to withhold salaries of nurses and other staff who could not be tested for COVID19 even though they are ‘well’ and ‘healthy.’
Most of nurses assigned to the facility were on studies at their various medical training institutes when Dr. Nellie Belle contracted the virus at her private Aspen hospital at Brookfields in Freetown.
It could be recalled that Dr. Belle infected ODCH nurses and other health workers due to poor and ineffective management of what used to be the holding centre for symptomatic patients during the Ebola virus disease outbreak in 2014.
The holding facility our sources revealed was not in place up to the time Dr. Belle noticed she was already infected by the virus and had gone that far and transmitted it to others at the children hospital where she serves as a paediatrician.
Moreover, in the wake of continuing controversies over non-payment of allowances to health workers including lab technicians, clinicians, contact tracers among others at coronavirus treatment centres, lots have been uncovered that so many hands are being played into the managements of funds meant for frontline health workers.
Our sources at the Peacekeeping Training Centre and other areas in the western rural, urban and in the provinces are that before funds meant for food reach the main contractors, most of the top level health personnel attached to the EOC had already deducted their kickback commissions from the moneys before they get to the cooks and utilize for their intended purposes.
The main reasons poorly prepared food being served to patients at quarantine centres, as painfully explained by a nurse lady from Ola During Children’s Hospital, who preferred anonymity saying; “Since we were brought here closed to three weeks now we are not even given paracetamol, let alone to mention delicious food, while in fact under normal circumstances we were well fed at homes only to become coronavirus prison and being provided for with deficient food. Most of us call in our people to bring us good food from our homes which are not available at the places we now find ourselves as virus infected suspects, all in the name in secure more confirmed cases.”
Treatment and holding facilities all over share the same problems of lack of proper food supplements to boost the immune systems of patients, the unwarranted calls for health workers’ allowances, non-payment of allowances to health personnel especially when doctors have started giving up to the virus while cases keep escalating every day.
It could be recalled that the last administration paid allowances twice every month to health workers via Airtel Money, Splash Money and served very delicious meals to patients nationwide.
A former Ebola treatment centre staff said the present management of situations at centres are not in the best interests of the national fighting against the virus.
However all efforts to reach the COVID19 EOC Spokesman Solomon Jamiru via WhatsApp, SMS messages and direct calls on this number +23278888099 for the Emergency Operations Centre’s comments on the issue proved unsuccessful.
