Family's fury over doctors' treatment of British nurse back in hospital with Ebola

Back in hospital: Nurse Pauline Cafferkey
Lisa Ferguson/Scotland on Sunday/PA Wire
Robin de Peyer11 October 2015

The family of a British nurse who has fallen will with Ebola for a second time have criticised doctors after she was told she had a virus and could leave when she attended a clinic feeling unwell.

Pauline Cafferkey is receiving treatment in London’s Royal Free Hospital after being admitted to hospital this week. Last year, the 39-year-old had contracted Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone.

Toni Cafferkey today said it was “absolutely diabolical” that doctors sent her sister home after she attended a GP out-of-hours clinic at the Victoria Hospital in Glasgow on Monday night.

Ms Cafferkey was admitted to hospital the following day, before being transferred to London to be treated in an isolation unit.

Referring to doctors sending her sister home, Toni Cafferkey told the Sunday Mail: “At that point me and my family believe they missed a big opportunity to give the right diagnosis and we feel she was let down. Instead of being taken into hospital, she spent the whole of Tuesday very ill.

"I think it is absolutely diabolical the way she has been treated... We don't know if the delays diagnosing Pauline have had an adverse effect on her health, but we intend to find out. It has not been good enough. We think there have been major failings and we just want her to pull through. This kind of recurrence seems to be rare but we don't yet know enough about it."

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde told the paper: "We can confirm that Pauline did attend the New Victoria Hospital GP out-of-hours service on Monday. Her management and the clinical decisions taken based on the symptoms she was displaying at the time were entirely appropriate.

"All appropriate infection control procedures were carried out as part of this episode of care."

Pauline Cafferkey, 39, from South Lanarkshire, was diagnosed with Ebola in December after returning to Glasgow from Sierra Leone via London.

She was critically ill and spent almost a month in an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital before being discharged in late January.

Ebola has been shown to persist for weeks or even months in parts of the body and in bodily fluids.

A statement from the Royal Free Hospital confirmed Ms Cafferkey had been transferred to the hospital "due to an unusual late complication of her previous infection by the Ebola virus".

It stressed: "The Ebola virus can only be transmitted by direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person while they are symptomatic, so the risk to the general public remains low and the NHS has well-established and practised infection control procedures in place."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in