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| Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey discharged from hospital | Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey discharged from hospital |
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| Pauline Cafferkey, the Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2014, has been discharged from hospital after she was cleared of any complication related to the virus. | |
| She was admitted to the Royal Free hospital, in Hampstead, north London, last week for the third time after developing a complication related to her previous infection. | |
| With relief and delight among her care team, however, she was discharged on Sunday and was expected to be on her way back home to Scotland. | |
| In a statement the hospital said that the public should not in any way be concerned about the spread of the virus because of the late complication. | |
| “We can confirm that Pauline is not infectious. The Ebola virus can only be transmitted by direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person while they are symptomatic,” the hospital said. | |
| Cafferkey contracted Ebola while working for the Save the Children emergency treatment centre outside Freetown in Sierra Leone in December 2014. | |
| She was evacuated to London and sent to the Royal Free, which has a specialist isolation unit for highly infectious patients. | |
| The nurse had made what was believed to be a full recovery and even appeared at the Pride of Britain awards last September in relation to her work saving lives of patients in Sierra Leone. But days later she had become critically ill from meningitis trigged by the lingering virus in her nervous system. | |
| Until the recent outbreak in west Africa, little was known about the long-term side effects, and over the past 18 months it has become evident that Ebola does not clear immediately from all parts of the body in every patient who has recovered. | |
| An American doctor, Ian Crozier, who contracted the virus in Sierra Leone, suffered side effects in one of his eyes three months after being discharged, including a change in the colour of his iris. | |
| Others have complained of headaches and lethargy, while studies have shown that the virus can remain in bodily fluids such as semen for up to nine months after infection. | |
| Sir Mike Jacobs, the lead consultant at the Royal Free on infectious diseases, said in October that Cafferkey had not become reinfected with the virus since her recovery in January but that it had persisted in the brain and this led to viral meningitis. | |
| She was not ill from Ebola, but meningitis caused by traces of the virus in what are known as immune-privileged sites, which are normally difficult to assess, such as the spinal cord, ocular fluid and the testes. | |
| “The virus re-emerged around the brain and around the spinal column to cause meningitis,” Jacobs said in October. “She developed some serious neurological complications.” | |
| He added: “We’re very hopeful that Pauline will slowly make a full recovery; that’s very much in our sights. Over time we anticipate that the virus will be completely eradicated. She has a long road to full recovery.” | |
| Cafferkey spent more than a month in hospital and came close to death in October. | |
| The fact she was in the Royal Free for less than five days suggests the complication she had developed did not go on to become a serious condition. |