British Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey back in hospital

Nurse Pauline Cafferkey is back in hospital for the third time since contracting Ebola, NHS officials say. The 39-year-old, from South Lanarkshire, first contracted the disease in December 2014 after treating patients in Sierra Leone at the height of the outbreak which killed more than 11,000 people. She spent almost a month being treated in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital. Ms Cafferkey was discharged in January 2015 after it was thought she had recovered from the virus.

In areas of the body where the immune system is not particularly active - one of these is the central nervous system … the Ebola virus can survive in very small quantities.

Dr Derek Gatherer, from Lancaster University

On 9 October last year she was flown from Glasgow back to the Royal Free Hospital by a military plane after an “unusual late complication” caused her to fall ill again, with meningitis caused by Ebola. At one point she was described as “critically ill” but she was discharged from hospital again in November last year, with doctors saying she had made a “full recovery”. The nurse was then sent to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital to continue her recovery closer to home. This is also where she is being treated currently.

Under routine monitoring by the Infectious Diseases Unit, Pauline Cafferkey has been admitted to hospital for further investigations.

An NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spokesman

Ebola nurse