Michael Jacobs, infectious diseases consultant at the Royal Free Hospital in London, yesterday said Ms Cafferkey, of Cambuslang, near Glasgow, became unwell with meningitis caused by Ebola.
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Dr Jacobs said: “I am really pleased she has made a significant improvement”.
The public health nurse contracted Ebola, which has killed more than 11,000 people internationally, while working as part of a 30-person team deployed by the United Kingdom government to work to contain the outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Earlier this week, however, the hospital said her condition had improved to “serious but stable”. As a result, she said, she doesn’t have enough money to pay her rent, which has added to her stress.
Mrs. Cafferkey was critically ill after doctors thought she had seen off the deadly infection and was fighting for her life. But to be very clear about this, she hasn’t been re-infected with the Ebola virus.
“They (Western medics) treated us and if this happens to them what does it mean for us?” he said, referring to Cafferkey’s relapse ten months after recovery.
Ms Cafferkey first contracted Ebola while working as a nurse at the Save the Children treatment centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone.
“We were extremely concerned about Pauline’s condition”.
“We’ve gone through in great detail with her what we do know about the drug and what we don’t know about the drug….”
But after becoming unwell in her Glasgow home she was readmitted to the same hospital twelve days ago, when Dr Jacobs said she had been close to losing her life.
Ms Cafferkey was the first patient in the world to be given the experimental anti-viral drug GS-5734, as previously-used antibody therapies are not suitable to be used on the brain. “The fact that there has so far been only one isolated [official] report of this type of infection suggests that this kind of transmission may be rare, but it highlights just how much we still don’t understand about the Ebola virus, infection and recovery”, Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust told The Guardian.
Like many different viruses, the Ebola virus can remain in so-called immune privileged sites in the body such as the fluid inside the eyes, the testicles and the brain and spinal cord. “Over time I anticipate that the virus will be eradicated from her completely”.
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Dr Jacobs said he was unable to put a timescale on Ms Cafferkey’s recovery, and said she would remain in the isolation unit for the short term.
