The Scottish nurse, who has already beaten Ebola twice, almost died from meningitis the last time she was admitted into hospital.
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Cafferkey was diagnosed with Ebola and was moved for intensive treatment to the Royal Free Hospital, which has an isolation unit with a tent with controlled ventilation set up over the patient’s bed.
Health officials said she had been under routine monitoring by the Infectious Diseases Unit but was now in hospital for further investigations.
She was last discharged from the Royal Free Hospital in November.
A Scottish nurse who recovered from Ebola, but then suffered life-threatening complications from the virus persisting in her brain, has been readmitted to hospital for a third time, the BBC reported on Tuesday (Feb 23).
“It is hard to know what the likelihood of further relapses are, given the previous unprecedented nature of her situation”, said Dr. Nathalie MacDermott, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College London.
She contracted the deadly virus while working as a nurse at the Save the Children treatment centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone.
“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”.
Pauline Cafferkey has been admitted to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital for what the National Health Service (NHS) has termed “routine monitoring” by its Infectious Diseases Unit.
She was treated with an experimental antiviral drug known as GS5734 being developed by United States drugmaker Gilead Sciences, although doctors did not disclose whether they thought the drug had improved her condition.
Medics said the heroic nurse was “critically ill” during this episode which took a month to recover from.
Pauline Cafferkey, who volunteered in 2014 to treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, is being treated at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, according to a hospital statement.
Dr Derek Gatherer, from Lancaster University, explained: “In areas of the body where the immune system is not particularly active, the Ebola virus can survive in very small quantities”.
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The total number of reported cases is nearly 29,000.
