British Ebola nurse in ‘critical’ condition
Print Edition
A BRITISH nurse who contracted Ebola was in a “critical” condition yesterday, as the new UN mission chief on the disease said that ending the deadliest-ever outbreak was within reach.
Nurse Pauline Cafferkey’s health has taken a turn for the worse in recent days, the Royal Free Hospital in London said.
“The condition of Pauline Cafferkey has gradually deteriorated over the past two days and is now critical,” the hospital said in a statement.
On Wednesday, doctors had said the 39-year-old Scot, who had been working with the charity Save the Children in Sierra Leone, was sitting up in bed, reading and talking to staff from inside her isolation tent in the hospital.
They said Cafferkey had agreed to be treated with blood plasma from an Ebola survivor, containing virus-fighting antibodies, and also take an experimental anti-viral drug.
Cafferkey was volunteering at a British-built treatment center in Kerry Town, not far from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, when she contracted the virus.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC television that Ebola was “certainly the thing uppermost in my mind today with Pauline Cafferkey in hospital, and all of us are thinking of her and her family.”
The Ebola outbreak has killed 7,900 people, according to the World Health Organization.
Almost all the deaths and cases have been in the west African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the new head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, said the world had no choice but to beat back the disease, as he arrived in the Ghanaian capital Accra to assume duty.
“This is a global crisis. We definitely have a difficult time ahead of us, but we can achieve it,” he said.
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