As the sage advises that a stitch in time is better than nine, we urge the government for prudent action in resolving the demands of health workers now on a go-slow in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare facilities throughout the country for nearly a week.

In a meeting with health minister Dr. Walter Gwenigale last week, leaders of the National Health Workers Association outlined their demands, including increment in their salaries, employment of health workers currently not on payroll and prompt result of an investigation into the mysterious death of their colleague who worked at JFK hospital for many years.

Representatives of the health workers reportedly agreed with health ministry authorities to persuade their members to return to work while their demands were being studied for possible implementation.

But, the health workers, apparently unsatisfied with the inaction over their grievances by authorities at the health ministry over the years, resolved to scale up the go-slow into a strike that has reportedly claimed lives at two health posts in Bong County.

It has, therefore, become urgent that some of the health workers' demands, which Dr. Gweingale already admitted to be above his level and cannot instantly solve due to acute budgetary constraints, need national attention and plausible resolution to eschew further escalation.

Perhaps, annoyed after health workers failed to heed a communiqué with their leaders to return to work, Dr. Gweginale rattled the sabers by sounding like an American president who once threatened to fire and replace striking air traffic controllers in his country having trained and qualified human resources in abundance.

"Strike is to put pressure for something to be done, but you have to know who is responsible for that thing to be done" as the limited funding allocated to the ministry couldn't solve all of the problems ranging from drugs, equipment and salaries, he explained.

Health workers were initially soothed to hear from the health minister that any additional money in the budget will be used to employ new people, but got infuriated after hearing: "Not to increase salaries."

Moreover, threats by the minister that the continuing strike could force him to replace striking workers in order to fulfill 'his responsibility to protect health of the Liberian people' cannot be a plausible option in this country where there exists no reservoir of trained personnel in any discipline that can hit the ground running.

Further, the issue of healthcare delivery, where trial and error cannot substitute for precision, is critical.

Depending on the Civil Service Agency, which has no known firm hold on a reservoir of nurses, physician assistants, midwives and support health personnel for employment by the health ministry to fill any large vacuum in the health sector is a pipedream and recipe for disaster in our hospitals and clinics. As health workers have cried over the years for better pay and incentives, we believe the onus is on government to appropriately mediate so as to prevent a looming disaster in the health sector.

We believe the consequence of a continued strike by health workers might paralyzed our fragile health system and render detrimental to the poor majority who lack the means to pay for treatment abroad as the affluence in our society do liberally.

Therefore, health must now become everybody's business so that we can put a stitch in time and save nine.