Ebola nurse admitted to UK hospital for third time

London :A 39-year-old Scottish nurse was today admitted to a hospital in the UK for the third time since she contracted the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone in 2014.

Pauline Cafferkey has been admitted to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital for what the National Health Service (NHS) has termed “routine monitoring” by its Infectious Diseases Unit.

It wasn’t initially clear whether Cafferkey was being readmitted because of complications from her previous contact with Ebola.
“Under routine monitoring by the Infectious Diseases Unit, Pauline Cafferkey has been admitted to hospital for further investigations,” an NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spokesperson said.

She was treated at London’s Royal Free Hospital twice in 2015 after contracting Ebola while working as a nurse at the Save the Children treatment centre in Sierra Leone’s Kerry Town.

Last year, the Royal Free Hospital had said Cafferkey had made a full recovery from Ebola and was no longer infectious.

She had been diagnosed in December 2014 after returning to Glasgow from the west African country via London.

At the time of her re-admission last November, the situation was described as “unprecedented” as the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Cafferkey was the only known Ebola survivor to develop meningitis months later.

At one point the Scottish nurse was described as “critically ill” but was discharged and transferred to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to continue her recovery and later returned home.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first reported in March 2014, and rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976.

The total number of reported cases is about 28,637.

In January 2016, WHO declared the last of the countries affected, Liberia, to be Ebola-free.

PTI