Ebola-hit UK nurse in critical condition

A British nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was hospitalised in London this week is now in a “critical” condition, the hospital said Saturday.

“The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust is sorry to announce that the condition of Pauline Cafferkey has gradually deteriorated over the past two days and is now critical,” it said.

On Wednesday, doctors had said the nurse was sitting up in bed, reading and talking to staff from inside her isolation tent in the hospital.

They said she had agreed to have blood plasma treatment and take an experimental anti-viral drug, which was unnamed but was not ZMapp, the drug used to successfully treat fellow British volunteer nurse William Pooley.

Dr Michael Jacobs, infectious diseases consultant at the Royal Free London, had warned at the time that “Ebola runs a very variable course and the next few days are going to be very critical”.

Cafferkey, who works for Britain’s state-run National Health Service (NHS), had been volunteering at a British-built treatment centre in Sierra Leone when she contracted the deadly virus.

She was diagnosed in Glasgow on December 29 after flying back to the Scottish city from west Africa, and was transferred to the Royal Free London, which has the only isolation ward in Britain equipped for Ebola patients.

Cafferkey is the second person to be treated for Ebola in Britain after Pooley, who recovered and has since returned to Sierra Leone.

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