Health officials are facing serious questions over the UK’s Ebola screening process after it emerged that a Scottish nurse who contracted the virus was cleared to leave Heathrow despite raising concerns about her health.
Public Health England revealed that Pauline Cafferkey (39) told medics she was worried she had Ebola before being given the all-clear to catch a British Airways flight to Glasgow.
Ms Cafferkey, a community nurse in Blantyre in south Lanarkshire, is the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed on British soil. She was receiving specialist treatment in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free hospital on Tuesday .
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, admitted there were questions over whether officials should have been "more precautionary" about Ms Cafferkey's concerns, but stressed that the risk to the public was extremely low.
Volunteers
A nurse for 16 years, Ms Cafferkey was one of 30 NHS volunteers who spent five weeks helping to treat Ebola patients in
Sierra Leone
with Save the Children. Prior to flying to the affected region she told BBC’s
Good Morning Scotland
: “For me, it was kind of a natural thing; I couldn’t think of any reason not to go.”
Ms Cafferkey returned on Sunday night on a flight from Freetown to Heathrow via Casablanca. While at Heathrow, Ms Cafferkey was screened alongside other health workers but asked for a second temperature test because she was worried she had contracted the virus.
Health officials said she passed six extra checks and was cleared to catch her internal British Airways flight from London to Glasgow.
Asked why Ms Cafferkey was allowed to fly, Ms Davies said: “She was cleared to travel because she did not have a significantly raised temperature. It does raise a question about whether we should be more precautionary.”
100 passengers
Officials are now trying to trace those who took the same flights from Casablanca to London and from London to Glasgow with Ms Cafferkey. More than 100 passengers have still not been traced.
Ms Davies confirmed that Ms Cafferkey would be offered plasma from European Ebola survivors including the British nurse William Pooley, who recovered from Ebola in September.
She stressed the risk to the general public of contracting Ebola was still extremely low, and called for accurate reporting of the ways Ebola can be spread – through bodily fluids and not merely skin contact.
Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon said she believed the current monitoring rules were robust, but would be kept under continual review.
Separately, it was confirmed two other people who had been in west Africa were being tested for Ebola, one in Aberdeen and one in Cornwall. – (Guardian service)