UK hospital caring for Ebola nurse to give details of her case

[October 21, 2015]  LONDON (Reuters) - Doctors treating Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey, the first known Ebola survivor to have suffered an apparent relapse of the virus, are to give details of her case on Wednesday.

Cafferkey was transferred from the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London on Oct. 9 and was last week described by her doctors as critically ill.

Earlier this week, however, the hospital said her condition had improved to "serious but stable".

Cafferkey's case has generated worldwide interest, as disease experts say there has never been a documented case like it. The Ebola virus has killed more than 11,300 people in West Africa in an unprecedented epidemic over the past year, which also left some 17,000 survivors of the disease.

In Wednesday's statement, the Royal Free said Michael Jacobs, an infectious diseases consultant, and Dr Daniel Bausch, a World Health Organization expert on pandemic and epidemic diseases, will answer questions on her case at a briefing for reporters due to start at around 1300 GMT (9.00 a.m. EDT).

Cafferkey, from South Lanarkshire, Scotland, spent several weeks in an isolation unit at the Royal Free at the beginning of the year after first contracting the Ebola virus in December 2014.
 

She was the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola on British soil.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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