VIDEO: Ebola nurse ‘seriously ill’

A nurse who is being treated for a late complication of the ebola infection is in a “serious condition”, said the hospital treating her.

Pauline Cafferkey was flown from Glasgow to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north-west London, in a military aircraft in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The hospital said she is in a “serious condition”.

Bodily tissues can harbour the ebola infection months after the person appears to have fully recovered.

An earlier hospital statement said: “We can confirm that Pauline Cafferkey was transferred from the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to the Royal Free London hospital in the early hours of this morning due to an unusual late complication of her previous infection by the ebola virus.

“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.”

People who have been in close contact with her are being monitored by Scottish health authorities as a precaution.

Cafferkey, 39, who is from South Lanarkshire, was diagnosed with ebola in December after returning to Glasgow from Sierra Leone via London. She spent almost a month in an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital before being discharged in late January.

She contracted ebola while working at the Save the Children treatment centre in Kerry Town.

A report from the charity in February said she was probably infected as a result of using a visor to protect her face rather than goggles.

She was placed in an isolation unit at Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital after becoming feverish, before being transferred by an RAF Hercules plane to London on December 30. She was then transferred to the specialist isolation unit at the Royal Free.

Cafferkey won an award at the Pride of Britain Awards in London on September 28. She met the prime minister’s wife, Samantha Cameron, the following day at Downing Street, alongside other winners.

Cafferkey has said that when she became ill she had felt like “giving up” as her condition became critical.

Of discovering she had ebola, she said: “Outwardly I just tried to be stoical about everything but inside, obviously, I was very frightened.”

The most recent outbreak of ebola mainly affected Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. More than 28,000 cases and over 11,000 deaths have been reported by the World Health Organisation.