One Doctor's Campaign To Pay Those Who Risked Their Lives

Published September 6, 2015 at 5:07 PM EDT

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Dr. Nahid Bhadelia gets a lesson in donning a protective suit before her trip to Sierra Leone. Since her time there, she has embarked on a campaign to raise funds for the local Ebola fighters, many of whom remain unpaid.

As the Ebola crisis raged in West Africa last year, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia of Boston University traveled to Sierra Leone several times. Together with many other American doctors, she served alongside local health workers in the city of Kenema.

This spring, back in the U.S., she learned something upsetting: Many of the local health workers in Kenema — people who had risked their lives on the front lines of Ebola treatment units — hadn't been paid for months.

So, Bhadelia took matters into her own hands — and started raising money for them on a GoFundMe page. Her goal is to raise $50,000. As she tells NPR's Arun Rath, she has decided to give money to health workers as it comes in.

Listen to the full interview at the audio link above, and find more of Dr. Bhadelia's story below.