Scottish Ebola Patient Flown From Glasgow To London

The Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola
volunteering in west Africa is being
transferred by military-style aircraft to
a specialist unit in London from hospital
in Glasgow.
The patient, who has not yet been named
but is in a stable condition, was taken on
board the aircraft within a specialist
quarantine tent from Glasgow airport
earlier on Tuesday morning, surrounded by
medical staff in protection suits.
Thought to be a nurse with NHS
Lanarkshire, she will be taken into the
UK’s high level isolation unit at the Royal
Free hospital in north London – the unit
which successfully treated British nurse
William Pooley who contracted Ebola last
August.
The hospital said in a statement: “The
Royal Free hospital can confirm that it is
expecting to receive a patient who has
tested positive for Ebola. The patient will
be treated in the high level isolation unit
(HLIU).”
The nurse was admitted to one of Scotland’s
main infectious diseases units at
Gartnavel hospital in Glasgow early on
Monday morning, after falling unwell only
a few hours after returning from two
months volunteering at a Save the Children
Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone.
Health experts treating the nurse, the
first case of Ebola to be diagnosed on UK
soil, said she was “quite stable” and
showing few signs causing clinical concern,
raising hopes she would survive the
disease.
Dr Alisdair MacConacchie, a consultant in
infectious diseases for NHS Greater
Glasgow and Clyde Consultant, who had
been treating the patient, said she had had
no contact with other parts of the the NHS
or any accident and emergency facility.
“She [is] quite stable and not showing any
great clinical concern at the minute.”
Asked about the patient’s prospects, he
said that being clinically stable at this
stage “should translate into a good
prognosis.”