Ebola nurse to return to old job

EBOLA survivor Pauline Cafferkey is to be given all the time she needs to recover by her bosses before she returns to work in the Scottish community where she is a nurse.

 Ms Cafferkey, 39, who was released from hospital at the weekend after fighting off the deadly virus plans to return to her post as an associate public nurse at Blantyre health centre in South Lanarkshire.

The nurse, from Cambuslng, is thought to be recovering at home with her family has been given indefinite leave until she feels strong enough to come back.

A spokesman for NHS Lanarkshire, the health board which employs her, said: “We are delighted to hear that Pauline has made a full recovery from Ebola and is back home.

“We hope Pauline is given the time and space she needs to recuperate and we look forward to welcoming her back once she is ready to return.”

Ms Cafferkey, who caught the virus while working as a nurse treating Ebola sufferers with Save The Children in Sierra Leone, had been critically ill at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

But she has attributed much of her recovery to drinking Irn-Bru.

Ms Cafferkey said at her owest point she believed she would die and told her doctors: “That’s it. I’ve had enough. I can’t carry on any more.”

The nurse had volunteered with Save The Children at the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town before returning to the UK.

Ms Cafferkey is thought to have begun feeling unwell during her flight from Casablana to London’s Heathrow on December 28 last year.

There she underwent screening which failed to show up the virus.

However, the nurse insisted that she felt perfectly well thoughout transit at the airport terminal, where she caught that night’s flight to Glasgow. She was admitted to hospital in Glasgow, where she was diagnosed with the disease, the following day.

Ms Cafferkey said she only began to feverish on returning to her flat.

“I felt fine throughout the whole journey. It wasn’t until I got home that I started to get the shivers, she said.

“We were all given thermometres when we got back and I took my temperature but thought it might be a urine infection or something like that.”

“I had a lovely doctor in Glasgow who had the horrible job of breaking the news to me that I had Ebola,” she said.

“I just said, ‘I’ve got a fight on my hands,’ as I knew what potentially could happen to me and did happen to me.”

As to whether Ms Cafferkey’s experience had any implications for the screening of health workers returning from ebola-affected areas, Public Health England (PHE) who are reviewing procedures stated yesterday that they would be making no further comment on the case.

The health body had traced and contacted passengers on the flight from Casablanca to Heathrow and advised each to take their temperature twice daily until January 18 when the incubation period ended. Health Protection Scotland had carried out a similar exericse with the 71 passengers from the flight to Glasgow which Ms Cafferkey took. No-one else was affected.

Her local Labour MP Tom Greatrex described her discharge from hospital as “brilliant news”.

“People in Blantyre and Cambuslang are delighted for Pauline and her family,” he said. “There was a huge amount of local concern, people’s thoughts and prayers were with Pauline.

There is a great deal of admiration for the work that she had been doing in Sierra Leone.”

In the past year, 21,724 Ebola cases have been reported in nine countries and 8,641 people have died, according to the WHO.

The organisation was criticised yesterday [Sunday] over its response to the epidemic, with donors and agencies urging the creation of a contingency fund and an emergency workforce to respond quickly to future crises.

Director-general Dr. Margaret Chan acknowledged that the outbreak showed the need to strengthen WHO’s crisis management and to streamline procedures for recruiting frontline workers.

Ms Cafferkey , who was treated with an experimental anti-virus drug, ZMabb and blood plasma from survivors, said she will donate her own plasma to help others battling the disease in Africa.

She is “very happy to be alive” and looking forward to a bath, seeing her friends and family, a vegetarian Chinese meal and returning to her day job working with children under five.

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