- Victims' families paying retrieval teams to let them keep infected bodies
- Traditional burials thought to have contributed to rapid rise of epidemic
- Workers paid to produce fake death certificates hiding presence of Ebola
- Meanwhile, treatment staff mostly report for duty despite fears of strikes
- Health workers are demanding 'risk' pay for dealing with the sick
- Liberian Government issues plea: 'Please, please stay with your patients'
By Corey Charlton for MailOnline
Published: 00:11 EST, 14 October 2014 | Updated: 00:11 EST, 14 October 2014
Bribery has broken out in Liberia with victims' families paying corrupt retrieval teams to let them keep the bodies and give them traditional burials.
The virus is highly infectious through exposure to bodily fluids, and its early rapid spread in west Africa was attributed in part to relatives touching victims during traditional funeral rites.
Teams have since been employed to either cremate or bury victims, but the outbreak continues to show no sign of slowing with more than 4,000 dead and twice as many infected.
Liberian Red Cross health workers remove the body of an Ebola victim who died in a treatment centre
A health worker indicates there are three bodies to be collected for cremation in Monrovia, Liberia
The Wall Street Journal has now reported the certificates are being issued to family members often still grieving as the retrieval teams arrive.
Vincent Chounse, a community outreach worker from Monrovia, told the paper: 'The family says the person is not an Ebola patient, and (the retrieval team) pull them away from the other people.
'Then they say: "We can give you a certificate from the Ministry of Health that it wasn’t Ebola".'
The price of the certificate ranged from $40 all the way to $150, the paper reported.
While the Liberian Government acknowledged there had been reports of retrieval teams issuing fake death certificates, it claimed the teams did not have the 'capacity' to issue certificates.
Meanwhile, Liberian health workers have reported for duty at hospitals, largely defying calls for a strike that could have further hampered the country's ability to respond to the epidemic.
A team remove the body of person suspected to have died from Ebola on a street in Monrovia
A health worker in Freetown, Sierra Leone, carries lab testing swabs to Rokupa Hospital
A Liberian nurse disinfects a motorcycle taxi after it was used to transport a suspected Ebola patient
Staff employed by the government to work with patients and bodies are demanding a pay rise. Pictured are a group of workers preparing to remove the body of an Ebola victim
Nurses escort a man from the JFK Ebola treatment center in Monrovia
Nurses and other health workers - though not doctors - had threatened to strike if they did not receive the higher hazard pay they had been promised by the government.
Liberia has the highest number of Ebola infections and deaths of any country, with 2,316 deaths.
Alphonso Weah, head of medical staff at Liberia's 150-bed Island Clinic in the capital Monrovia, said workers had decided to come in after appeals from the general public.
'We have agreed, collectively as a community, to go back to work,' Weah told a popular radio talk show.
But George Williams, secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association of Liberia, said the government was pressuring workers by trying to shame them and offering money.
'The President went to various Ebola Treatment Units, giving them money and asking those who are not a true Liberian to put up their hands that they would strike.'
Disinfected boots and gloves are left hanging inside the Elwa 3 Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia
Two Liberian Red Cross workers prepare to collect the bodies of victims from a treatment centre
A doctors warns a local bystander to stay away from a unit where Ebola victims are being held
Healthcare workers are particularly vulnerable to Ebola because the disease is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person.
More than 95 healthcare workers in Liberia have died, about the same number as in Sierra Leone
The two people who have been infected outside Africa were both healthcare workers - nurses - who treated Ebola patients.
Health Minister Walter Gwenigale said he was working to implement a promised pay rise.
He said: 'That money is available and is being paid. So please, please stay with your patients.'
Months into the crisis, concern that Ebola could spread globally has spurred the international community to step up support for the affected countries with medical personnel, material and pledges of about $1billion to tackle the epidemic.
Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said: 'I have never seen a health event threaten the very survival of societies and governments in already very poor countries.
'The outbreak spotlights the dangers of the world's growing social and economic inequalities. The rich get the best care. The poor are left to die.'
Liberia has been hit the hardest by the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, with more than 2,000 dead. Pictured is the removal of a victim's body
A member of an Ebola burial team straps down a corpse before transporting it for cremation
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