Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who contracted Ebola virus in 2014, returns to London for late complication treatment.
Cafferkey, who hails from South Lanarkshire, was initially admitted at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, but was later transferred to Royal Free Hospital via RAF aircraft at the Glasgow airport on Tuesday afternoon.
Authorities say she is in a stable condition.
Royal Free Hospital Confirms
Royal Free Hospital confirms in a statement that Cafferkey is being transferred back to the institution because of a late complication of her previous Ebola virus infection.
"She will now be treated by the hospital's infectious diseases team under nationally agreed guidelines," the statement reads.
Royal Free also reminded the public that Ebola virus can only be transferred through direct contact with blood and bodily fluids of an infected individual who still has no signs and symptoms yet. With this, the institution says that the risk to the public is low and that National Health Service has developed strong infection control measures, which are all in place.
Cafferkey's History
Cafferkey contracted Ebola virus while working as a nurse at the Save the Children treatment center located in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone.
She was diagnosed to have Ebola in December 2014 and then spent nearly a month at an isolation ward in Royal Free. Doctors cleared her for discharge, but were later admitted again in October 2015, this time for meningitis still due to Ebola.
Cafferkey was once described as "critically ill" during the said admission, with doctors even saying that Cafferkey's case was "unprecedented" because she was the only Ebola patient to experience reactivation of the virus in the form of meningitis long after the typical reactivation periods recorded in the past.
In November 2015, she was transferred to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, where she continued recovery until she was sent home.
Cafferkey's Situation Now
Experts recognize that Ebola virus is a disease that continues to plague people even after being declared "survivors". The infection can cause complications both for patients in the U.S. and in West Africa.
As for Cafferkey, Dr. Nathalie MacDermott from Imperial College London says the exact situation is still unknown. She says that it would be wrong to assume that she is currently experiencing an Ebola reactivation. She further explains that it is hard to determine possible relapses especially because Cafferkey's case had a history of unprecedented events.
On Jan. 14, WHO declared zero cases of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea the three West African countries most significantly hit by the virus. This is the first time in two years that all three nations did not report a single case within a period of 42 days.
