Caring for the Caregivers

Increasingly appalled.

That’s how Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease specialist at Boston Medical Center, felt as she made numerous trips to Sierra Leone to help Ebola patients over the past year.

The suffering of the victims was terrible, of course. But so was the plight of the country’s health care workers, who often weren’t being paid.

“It was horrid. They were doing life-saving work but weren’t actually seeing any money,” said Bhadelia, who’s also an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine , director of infection control and medical response at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory , and a senior adviser to Boston-based Partners in Health.

So Bhadelia launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the nurses, lab technicians, ambulance drivers, burial workers, and others treating Ebola victims.