Furious ebola nurse Pauline:‘I am a scapegoat’
SCOTS Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey has blasted authorities after she was cleared of professional misconduct, saying she was made a scapegoat.
Pauline Cafferkey was infected while working in Sierra Leone in West Africa in 2014.
But after battling the disease twice, last week she faced charges for allegedly allowing a wrong temperature to be recorded during the screening process at Heathrow on her arrival in the UK.
However, the panel dismissed the charges after hearing she had been impaired by illness.
Another charge of dishonesty was withdrawn.
Last night the nurse, who lives in Cambuslang, hit back at health organisations.
In an interview the 40-year-old said there was a number of systematic failings by authorities. Her claims included: Health watchdog Public Health England struggled to cope with large numbers of returning medics from Africa in the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak, and did not have enough screening kits at the airport.
Medics were told to take each other’s temperatures on return to the UK – a breach of rules.
When she alerted them to her temperature, PHE staff couldn’t contact experts – because they had the wrong phone number
She was also cleared to fly home before officials sought the opinion of an infectious diseases specialist.
An angry Pauline said: “I went out there to help save lives but I came back to a system that failed. I was made a scapegoat for a catalogue of errors.
“PHE were entirely responsible. They, not me, put public lives at risk by allowing me to fly before they had an opinion from an infectious diseases official.”
The nurse added it had been “awful” to be viewed as dishonest throughout her hearing.
She added: “It’s like my reputation had been destroyed, even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong. I feel tremendous relief that I can finally talk about it and that I’ve been believed.
“For a long time, I felt guilty about having walked out of the screening area.
“In my mind, I really thought I was to blame for something that could have put the public at risk.
“But as the investigation went on, and I started reading other people’s statements, I realised that, no, it was a catalogue of errors by PHE that brought us all to this.
“They put the public at risk when their job was to protect the public.”
Chaotic scenes greeted Pauline at Heathrow – Europe’s busiest airport – when she arrived in December 2014 after six weeks in Sierra Leone nursing ebola sufferers.
The NMC hearing heard that the Heathrow unit had not been prepared for a large influx of passengers from Sierra Leone and the screening area was “busy, disorganised and even chaotic”.
Last night a PHE spokesman denied Pauline’s “version of facts.”
He added: “PHE screened thousands of returners from countries most at risk of ebola and did so with efficiency and courtesy throughout.
“We have nothing further to add.”