ThinkTank

By Umaru Fofana

Yesterday - Monday 1 September - nurses at Sierra Leone's main referral hospital went on strike. 24 hours earlier nurses and other health workers at the country's only public-run Ebola treatment centre in Kenema had also gone on strike. In both cases and places it was over non-payment of allowances.

By Umaru Fofana

Probably not from the blue, President Ernest Bai Koroma appeared angry last week with the international community and their response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in his country.

By Umaru Fofana

It has become one of those where-were-you moments. The day on which Sierra Leone woke up to instructions - phoney or real - from nowhere, calling on people to bathe in hot salt water to cure or prevent themselves from the deadly Ebola sickness.

By Umaru Fofana

"At the initial stage the government of Sierra Leone failed to quarantine those areas that were affected by Ebola; now the world is quarantining the entire country".

This was how a friend of mine remarked in reaction to the suspending of flights to Freetown by some airlines as the deadly outbreak took a sinister twist.

By Umaru Fofana

He lies on a makeshift bed in a ward, quarantined. Probably with his forehead or hind head in both hands. Wondering and quizzing himself as to where he could have gone wrong. He can, for the time being at least, not see the faces of his colleagues - some of them his juniors.

By Umaru Fofana

The last few months have witnessed the most worrisome times for the media and press freedom in Sierra Leone since the end of the civil war 12 years ago. That is a given.

From the random picking-up of journalists at the say-so of government officials by a police force that just cannot stop carrying out political diktat, to the latest slump by the country's cabinet as to order the closure of the weekly radio programme, MONOLOGUE,  without regard to procedure, decency never mind best practice.

By Umaru Fofana

She raced from the outpatient unit towards the direction of the screening centre at the Kenema Government Hospital. In her firm grip was her child who must be less than three years old. She also clutched under her armpit a plastic bottle containing chlorine - a symbol of prevention which is ubiquitous in the eastern headquarter town.