The British nurse who contracted Ebola in West Africa is now in critical condition according to London’s Royal Free Hospital on Saturday.
“Sorry to announce that the condition of Pauline Cafferkey has gradually deteriorated over the past two days and is now critical,” the hospital said in a statement.
Cafferkey, 39, was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday after returning to Britain on Sunday from Sierra Leone, where she had been working for the charity Save the Children at a treatment centre outside the capital, Freetown.
She is the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola in United Kingdom.
Dr Michael Jacobs, infectious diseases consultant at the Royal Free London, said the hospital was “giving her the very best care possible,” but “the disease has a variable course.”
“At the moment, we don’t know what the best treatment strategies are,” Dr Jacobs said. “That’s why we’re calling them experimental treatments. As we’ve explained to Pauline, we can’t be as confident as we would like.
“There’s obviously very good reason to believe it’s going to help her, otherwise we wouldn’t be using it at all, but we simply don’t have enough information to know that’s the case.”
“My thoughts and prayers are with nurse Pauline Cafferkey who is in a critical condition with Ebola,” British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted Saturday.
Source(s):
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/03/uk-nurse-ebola-critical/21228447/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/03/ebola-nurse-pauline-cafferkey_n_6410014.html