Two Sierra Leone doctors died of Ebola virus in just a single day, reports say on Friday. Health authorities in the country have yet to release statement about the latest fatalities.
It is not clear how the doctors were infected, but reports said they were not working on the frontline in an Ebola clinic.
The latest death brings the total number of doctors killed by the virus in Sierra Leone to 10.
In his address to the parliament on Friday, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma had called health care workers fighting the deadly disease as the country’s “greatest patriots”.
Sierra Leone has pledged to pay the families of all medical staff who died fighting Ebola $5,000 in compensation.
In Rome, the Italian doctor who was transported to the city after he contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone has been transferred in intensive care after his condition worsened on Friday.
The 50-year-old physician contracted the virus while working for the humanitarian group Emergency in Sierra Leone.
The Lazzaro Spallanzani infectious diseases unit in Rome said the patient had to be given respiratory assistance on Thursday evening.
He had also received an experimental drug never used before in Italy, and plasma taken from Ebola survivors.
The World Health Organization’s latest figures showed Ebola has killed nearly 6,200 people, mainly in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea since the worst ever Ebola outbreak on record began earlier this year.
The epidemic has torn through some of the region’s weakest health systems, killing nearly 350 health care workers, including 106 in Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, the Ebola hard-hit countries urged the United Nations to come up with an economic recovery plan to help them cushion the outbreak’s devastating blow on their economy.
In a special meeting on Ebola of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Guinea’s Finance and Economy Minister Mohamed Diare said they need additional backing to remain on their toes after the outbreak is over.