Ebola Nurse And Two Colleagues Back In UK

A British healthcare worker who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone has arrived in the UK for specialist treatment.

The unnamed woman, who works for the British military in Kerry Town, is being treated at a special high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in northwest London.

Two fellow military healthcare workers who came into contact with the woman returned to the UK on the same RAF plane, Public Health England (PHE) said.

The pair will be assessed at the Royal Free, the hospital said.

"Neither is displaying symptoms of the disease," it said.

Two other co-workers who also came into contact with the woman are still in Sierra Leone under observation, but will be flown to Newcastle on Friday on an EU Medevac flight.

They will be taken to the city's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Rapid tracing was undertaken to identify anyone who had been in recent close contact with the worker after she tested positive to the disease, a PHE spokeswoman said.

"This contact tracing identified four military healthcare workers requiring further assessment," she said.

An investigation has been launched into exactly how the woman fell ill, at the same British-run clinic where Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey contracted the virus.

Ms Cafferkey had volunteered with Save The Children at the Ebola Treatment Centre in January. She returned to the UK before making a full recovery.

Another British nurse, Will Pooley, also survived the highly-contagious disease after contracting it while working in Sierra Leone last year.

No British nationals have died from Ebola, but there have been more than 9,500 fatalities in West Africa since the outbreak began.

Ms Cafferkey and Mr Pooley were the only Britons to have tested positive for the disease until the latest case.

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "Despite there being stringent procedures and controls in place to safeguard UK service personnel, there is always a level of risk in deployments on operations of this type."

An estimated 700 British servicemen and women have been deployed to Sierra Leone to help in the response against Ebola, which swept through West Africa last year.

They have helped build and staff medical centres such as the Kerry Town Ebola Crisis Centre which opened in November last year, along with a number of volunteers from the NHS.

The 80-bed hospital is managed by Save the Children. It has several beds reserved for health workers who fall ill with the potentially deadly virus.

The World Heath Organisation said the death toll from the Ebola epidemic has surpassed 10,000.