The recruitment process is part of the Department of Health's Ebola Emergency Response and is currently underway. Applicants, who will ideally have ICU experience, are being offered full training, flights, transfers, salary, per diems, insurance and housing. Should they contract the disease whilst in Sierra Leone, the South African government has agreed to treatment in South Africa.
Says Prof Ian Sanne, CEO of Right to Care and an infectious diseases expert, "By sending these healthcare workers to Sierra Leone they will not only help the medical sector there, but will gain critical skills in treating this condition should cases reach South Africa. The Department of Health has said that an effective Ebola response requires R250 million, between the government and the private sector, only R40 million has been raised so far. We are hoping that the Department of Health as well as private sector hospitals will release interested doctors and nurses for two months on full pay."
Right to Care, which has contributed R3 million to the initiative, has a coordination manager currently stationed in Sierra Leone and the organisation is involved in creating more effective systems in the country's laboratories.
"It is taking up to 10 days to get Ebola cases confirmed and, by implementing the systems we use in the South African public sector, we can reduce this to 5 days. Right to Care with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) are distributing bar coded lab forms to the fourteen districts in Sierra Leone."
There are four partners working on South Africa's response to Ebola under the leadership of the Department of Health. They are Right to Care, which has a MoU with the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone, the Wits Health Consortium, which is overseeing, and managing funds from the private sector on behalf of the Department of Health, and the NICD, which has set up labs in Sierra Leone, is providing training and has a number of staff there. FNB has committed to paying for transport, flights and transfers for this medical intervention.
"We believe that altruistic medical workers with an interest in infectious diseases are most likely to respond to our call," concludes Prof Sanne.
