Back in her bubble, Ebola nurse is struck down for a third time
ENCASED in a plastic isolation box, Ebola victim Pauline Cafferkey was yesterday flown to hospital for a third time in little over a year for treatment for a ‘late complication’ from the virus.
The nurse, whose relapse has puzzled medical experts, was taken by RAF plane from Glasgow to London.
Sheets of plastic and a surgical mask over her face protected others as the 40-year-old was carried on to a Hercules aircraft by NHS staff and military personnel.
Miss Cafferkey is the only known survivor of Ebola to have seen the virus repeatedly ‘reactivate’ in her body. The former Save the Children volunteer was originally infected in December 2014 while helping Ebola victims in Sierra Leone.
She spent almost a month in an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in north-west London and was discharged after recovering.
But she fell ill again in October last year and was treated at the same hospital for meningitis caused by Ebola lying hidden in her brain.
Again the disease was beaten back and she left hospital last November, but yesterday it emerged that she was in another battle. Dr Ben Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading, said last night: ‘ This is completely unprecedented, as was the last hospital stay for Pauline Cafferkey.
‘It shows the virus is still growing in her body, in areas the immune system cannot reach – probably now affecting her sight or her brain, which are the most walled off areas from the immune system.’
He added: ‘ With most little viruses, like Ebola, you catch them once, and if you survive your body is absolutely clear of the virus, In this case, it looks as if the virus has been able to linger, as we think it also does in bats. Pauline is the first person unlucky enough not to be rid of this thing.’
The alarm was raised yesterday following routine monitoring of
‘Completely unprecedented’
Miss Cafferkey, from South Lanarkshire, in Glasgow.
She was moved into an isolation tent at Glasgow Airport before being taken on to the Hercules for her third trip to the Royal Free via RAF Northolt where she was transferred to an ambulance with a police escort. A hospital spokesman said: ‘We can confirm that Pauline Cafferkey is being transferred to the Royal Free Hospital due to a late complication from her previous infection by the Ebola virus. She will now be treated by the hospital’s infectious diseases team under nationally agreed guidelines.
‘The Ebola virus can only be transmitted by direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person while they are symptomatic, so the risk to the general public remains low and the NHS has well- established and practised infection control procedures in place.’
Miss Cafferkey is one of three Britons to have been infected with Ebola which working in Sierra Leone. Aid worker William Pooley, 30, from Suffolk, and Army reserve nurse Anna Cross, 26, from Cambridge, also contracted Ebola, but have since recovered.
The Ebola outbreak was declared over last year by the World Health Organisation after the deaths of thousands of people, but two new cases emerged in Sierra Leone in January.