Scots ebola nurse now ‘critical’, say doctors
THE life of ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey was last night hanging in the balance after her condition worsened to ‘critical’.
Just three days after saying the 39-year-old Scot was ‘as well as we can hope for’, doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in North London said they were ‘sorry to announce that the condition of Pauline Cafferkey has gradually deteriorated over the past two days and is now critical’.
The development came as news emerged that a patient suffering from ebola-like symptoms was taken to hospital in Swindon yesterday.
Miss Cafferkey has been in a secure isolation unit at the London hospital since Tuesday, having been diagnosed in Glasgow after a stint with Save The Children in Sierra Leone.
On New Year’s Eve, she was ‘sitting up in bed, talking’. But that day, consultant Dr Michael Jacobs warned: ‘The next few days will be crucial.’
After the recovery of nurse William Pooley at the Royal Free, hopes have been high for Miss Cafferkey. No Western medic has yet died of ebola. However, unlike Mr Pooley, Miss Cafferkey has not benefited from an experimental treatment called ZMapp. Supplies of the drug ran out in October.
Miss Cafferkey has received a new anti-viral drug, which doctors refuse to name, and blood plasma from a survivor.
Yesterday, a patient with ebola-type symptoms, said to have been in Sierra Leone, was taken to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance from Gloucestershire.