Scottish nurse previously infected with Ebola readmitted to hospital

A World Health Organization team went to Kenema, Sierra Leone, a year ago to assess Ebola survivors who had a range of symptoms.

Pauline Cafferkey was flown from Glasgow to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north-west London, in a military aircraft in the early hours of yesterday morning, after being admitted to a Scottish hospital on Tuesday. According to the Express, a report from the Save The Children charity in February this year said Cafferkey probably became infected with the virus because she used a visor to protect her face instead of goggles.

She is understood to be in a serious condition, but chances of contagion remain low, health chiefs said. Bodily tissues can harbor the Ebola infection months after the person seems to be fully recovered.

London’s Royal Free Hospital says a nurse who recovered from Ebola previous year has been hospitalized again and is being treated for an unusual late complication.

Dr Emilia Crighton, NHSGGC director of public health, said: “Pauline’s condition is a complication of a previous infection with the Ebola virus.The risk to the public is very low”.

As a precaution, Scottish health authorities have been monitoring all the people who came in close contact with the nurse.

She spent nearly a month in the isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital and was treated with an experimental anti-viral drug and blood from survivors of the Ebola disease. Cafferkey will be treated at the Royal Free Hospital using nationally agreed procedures. “The school sends Pauline its best wishes and hopes she has a speedy recovery”.

She’s not thought to be contagious but all precautions are being taken just in case.

Presenter Carol said Pauline was on fine form on the night, when she accepted the award from Doctor Foster star Suranne Jones and Sir Lenny Henry for her humanitarian work.

The trouble with Ebola is the fact that not much is known about it. Survivor Dr Craig spencer wrote in an article he published in the New England Journal of Medecine that “we can not explain exactly what it does to our bodies, nor tell patients who survive it how it may affect them in the future”.

Two nurses at a hospital in Texas contracted the virus after providing treatment to the infected man, briefly prompting a national scare and causing several people to be isolated for observation.

“All appropriate infection control procedures were carried out as part of this episode of care”. After spending three weeks in the same Royal Free unit – and coming close to death – she was given the all-clear in January. Ebola can be passed on by having direct contact with the blood or bodily fluid of a sufferer.