Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey Rushed Back To Hospital In Glasgow Under Police Escort


Pauline Cafferkey, the nurse who got infected with the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone in 2014, has been taken to a hospital in Glasgow under police escort.

The 40-year-old nurse volunteered for Save the Children in December 2014 to help Ebola victims in Sierra Leone.

Cafferkey, who nearly died twice since being infected by the deadly brain bug virus, is the only Ebola survivor who has seen the virus reactivate in her body numerous times.

According to the Guardian, Police Scotland confirmed that they provided Pauline Cafferkey an escort “as a matter of course.” She was taken to Queen Elizabeth University hospital via ambulance.

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said that Cafferkey remains stable and that she has been rushed to the hospital for “routine monitoring.”

“Ms Cafferkey was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University hospital under routine monitoring by the infectious diseases team. She is undergoing further investigations and her condition remains stable.”

Cafferkey was the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola on British soil. She was then flown to London’s Royal Free Hospital, where she was placed in an isolation unit for Ebola patients for nearly a month.

After a close brush with death, Pauline was pronounced stable and declared to be non-infectious in January 2015. In October, Cafferkey became critically ill once again and got sent back to Royal Free.

Her case astonished medical experts since she was the first Ebola patient where the virus stayed undetected in her brain or spinal column only to attack once more, resulting to meningitis which nearly killed Pauline.

Pauline Cafferkey suffered complications after her second attack, including muscle weakness, which prevented her from running as well as she used to.

Pauline was admitted to Royal Free for the third time but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Medical experts said that they can’t say for sure whether the Ebola virus is still in her system because not much is known about the virus.

Three weeks ago the Nursing and Midwifery Council cleared Cafferkey from allegations that she concealed her high temperature upon her return to Heathrow from Sierra Leone in 2014, as reported by BBC.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council pointed out that Pauline Cafferkey “potentially put the public at risk” when she flew home while in the early stages of Ebola and compromised trust in the nursing profession.

A two-day panel hearing accepted professional medical advice that the Ebola virus “substantially affected” Pauline Cafferkey’s ability to think rationally on returning to the UK.

Pauline Cafferkey, who won a Pride of Britain award for her bravery in battling the Ebola virus, said that she found the case against her “upsetting,” and argued that she was used as a “scapegoat” for the missteps committed by Public Health England.

“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.’

“It’s been awful being thought of as dishonest. It’s like my reputation had been destroyed, even though I knew I had done nothing wrong.”

Pauline Cafferkey has always been vocal about her illness. In an interview with BBC in May, she said that although she has been tested negative for Ebola, she still has “some remnants there as a result of it.”

“But on the other hand, I am alive and I have received the best care in the world,” Pauline said.

The Ebola outbreak that spread through Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone had 28,000 reported incidents of infections, resulting in over 11,000 deaths.

[Featured Image by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images]

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