Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey has been admitted to hospital for the third time since contracting Ebola during the 2014/15 outbreak in West Africa.
Health officials say she is being monitored by the Infectious Diseases unit at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
The 39-year-old contracted Ebola while working as a nurse at the Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone at the starts of 2015, but the virus was not detected in her body until she returned to the UK.
She spent nearly a month in isolation at London’s Royal Free Hospital while receiving treatment for the disease, and was later discharged after being found to have made a full recovery.
In October, her symptoms reappeared and she was diagnosed with meningitis caused by the virus. She was treated with a “highly experimental” anti-viral drug called GS5734. It is unknown whether the drug had an impact on her condition, but doctors said she had made a full recovery by November and discharged her from hospital.
Ebola can hide in reservoirs away from the body’s immune system for many months after all traceable symptoms of the disease have disappeared.
More than 11,000 people died in the Ebola outbreak that struck west Africa in 2014-2015 before the global response managed to bring the infectious disease under control. On 13 January 2016, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Liberia, the last of the countries affected, to be Ebola-free.
