The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Three-week battle to survive the virus

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NOVEMBER 22, 2014

Pauline, an associate public health nurse at Blantyre Health Centre, Lanarkshir­e, is among five Scottish NHS workers who fly out to Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown to help in the fight against ebola in a team of 30 volunteers deployed by the UK Government.

NOVEMBER 30, 2014

After a week’s training, the team starts work in British-built centres diagnosing and treating people with the deadly virus.

MID-DECEMBER 2014

Working as a volunteer with Save The Children, Miss Cafferkey writes in her diary: ‘The area where the ebola patients are is classed as the infective Red Zone, and the area surroundin­g it, the safe Green Zone. Bizarrely, we find ourselves saying “good luck” to our colleagues prior to entering the Red Zone.’

MID-DECEMBER 2014

In her second week she writes: ‘The alien-type suit I have to wear when going into the positive Red Zone is horrendous. It takes about 20 minutes to dress and 15 minutes to take off the suit at the other end. I feel very well protected.’

DECEMBER 29, 2014

Only hours after flying back to Glasgow, Miss Cafferkey complains of feeling unwell. She is taken to Gartnavel Hospital and placed in isolation. Tests confirm she has ebola. Health authoritie­s rush to trace other passengers from her flights.

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Miss Cafferkey is transferre­d in a quarantine tent in a chartered RAF plane and helicopter to the Royal Free Hospital in London.

DECEMBER 31, 2014

Doctors announce Miss Cafferkey is being treated with two types of experiment­al treatments including antiviral drugs and the blood plasma donated by an ebola survivor.

JANUARY 3, 2015

After her condition deteriorat­es to ‘critical’ doctors announce that her life is hanging in the balance.

JANUARY 12, 2015

Showing signs of improvemen­t, she is ‘no longer critically ill’.

JANUARY 24, 2015

She is discharged from hospital and says she is ‘happy to be alive’.

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