Monrovia — The resignation of Joana Domingo Joekai as Director of Nursing Services at John F. Kennedy Medical Center (JFK), Liberia’s largest public hospital, has exposed a months-long internal dispute that hospital sources say ended with her reassignment to the Ministry of Health over allegations of repeated insubordination — and, separately, over her alleged role in a false Ebola scare that spread on social media.
Joekai is married to Josiah F. Joekai Jr., director general of Liberia’s Civil Service Agency, the government body that oversees hiring and personnel policy across the country’s public sector. That marriage has made her departure a matter of unusual scrutiny in Monrovia, where officials’ spouses are often seen as extensions of their influence.
She announced her resignation in a July 17 letter to JFK’s chief executive, Dr. Linda A. Birch, citing what she called unfair treatment, denial of due process, and the hospital’s refusal to reinstate her after, she said, police cleared her of wrongdoing. Her resignation takes effect August 25.
But FrontPage Africa has learned from multiple sources familiar with the matter that the hospital’s decision to remove Joekai from her post went beyond the Ebola episode alone.
A Dress Code Dispute, and Worse
According to those sources, Joekai was accused of repeated insubordination toward senior management and had already faced disciplinary action before her eventual reassignment.
Sources allege she refused to comply with the hospital’s nursing uniform policy, opting instead for business suits — including, they say, after returning from a prior suspension — in what management is said to have viewed as open defiance of hospital rules.
Sources also allege that Joekai’s relationship with management deteriorated further during the hospital’s Ebola misinformation investigation, described below. During that investigation, sources claim, Joekai and her husband confronted and pressured hospital staff, with Joekai allegedly warning that her husband — given his position overseeing civil service personnel — could make matters difficult for JFK. Sources described her conduct in this period as confrontational and disrespectful toward management.
Joekai has publicly denied all of this. In her resignation letter, she said the allegations against her were false and noted she was cleared by the Liberia National Police (LNP) after cooperating with investigators. She said that despite that clearance, JFK management never reinstated her.
“Silence prevailed,” she wrote. “No explanation was provided. No acknowledgment was issued. No lawful basis for continued exclusion from my position was communicated.”
She said she was later reassigned to the Ministry of Health as part of what she described as a “personnel reform” exercise — a move she has disputed. Hospital sources say she had already been away from JFK for nearly three months and was due to formally report to the ministry at the start of July.
The Ebola Scare
The dispute traces back to May, when a recorded voice message began circulating on Liberian social media claiming that suspected Ebola patients had entered the country and that health authorities were covering it up. The claim triggered public alarm in a country that lost thousands of people to Ebola during West Africa’s 2014–2016 outbreak — one of the deadliest in the disease’s history — and where memories of that epidemic remain acute.
JFK responded by suspending Paola N. Bedell, a registered nurse at the hospital’s E.S. Grant Psychiatric facility, pending an investigation, according to a May 25 suspension letter signed by Birch. The hospital said the recording had drawn the attention of national security agencies and stressed that the suspension was administrative, not a finding of guilt.
Bedell denied originating the claim. She said she was merely repeating what Joekai had told her and other nurses during an Ebola-preparedness training — specifically, that people arriving from Uganda were being quarantined over suspected infections, and that staff should take extra precautions. Joekai has consistently denied telling nurses this.
Joekai’s Account
In her resignation letter, Joekai said she had returned to Liberia after a nursing career in the United States with the goal of strengthening nursing leadership at JFK, and pointed to changes she said improved supervision, training, accountability, morale and patient care across JFK, E.S. Grant, and the Maternity Hospital.
She said the Ebola claim originated from an inaccurate social media report and that she was suspended without a chance to respond. She said police found no evidence against her and issued her a clearance. She said she requested reinstatement in letters dated June 8 and June 17, and appealed her reassignment to the health ministry on June 29, arguing it amounted to continued punishment despite her exoneration — but received no response to any of it.
“In more than twenty years of professional service in state-of-the-art healthcare institutions across the United States, I have never experienced treatment of this nature,” she wrote.
Despite her criticism of hospital management, Joekai thanked the nurses, physicians, and administrators she worked alongside and voiced continued confidence in President Joseph Boakai’s leadership.
JFK Medical Center has not publicly responded to the allegations in Joekai’s resignation letter.
