While the world has its eyes on the Zika Virus, one nurse is still contending with the virus that the World Health Organization and others have deemed an afterthought: Ebola. Once thought to have recovered from Ebola after suffering from life-threatening complications due to the virus persisting in her brain, a nurse has found herself in the hospital once more.
Scottland-born Pauline Cafferkey's Ebola saga is a long one, beginning in December 2014 when she contracted the virus while working at a treatment facility in Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola epidemic, which swept through three countries in West Africa, according to Sky News.
She was thought to have recovered from the Ebola hemorrhagic fever and was sent home in January of last year after she was treated at Royal Free Hospital in Britain, after being transferred there from Sierra Leone.
However, she fell ill again just months later in October and doctors found that the virus was persisting in her brain. They determined she developed meningitis caused by the Ebola virus - a development doctors viewed as "unprecedented" since it was the first such case to be documented.
"This is the original Ebola virus she had many months ago which has been inside the brain, replicating at a very low level, and has now reemerged to cause this clinical illness of meningitis," Dr. Michael Jacobs, infectious diseases consultant at the Royal Free Hospital, said during a press conference at the time, according to the Independent. "This is an unprecedented situation."
She was described at one point as "critically ill," but through the use of an experimental antiviral drug known as GS5734, which was being developed by U.S. drugmaker Gilead Science, she apparently made a full recovery and was discharged in November.
Now as it turns out, Cafferkey hadn't recovered and as of Tuesday, was being transferred from the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to the Royal Free Hospital - marking her third hospitalization there, according to Reuters.
"We can confirm that Pauline Cafferkey is being transferred to the Royal Free Hospital due to a late complication from her previous infection by the Ebola virus," the hospital said in a statement. "She will now be treated by the hospital's infectious diseases team under nationally agreed guidelines."
