Scottish Ebola nurse faces disciplinary action over false claim

Scottish nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, faces disciplinary action over claims she concealed her temperature at an Ebola screening on her return to the United Kingdom.

The 40-year-old was infected with the virus while at a treatment centre in Sierra Leone in 2014.

She is alleged to have given dishonest answers to medical staff when she returned to Heathrow airport, BBC said.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has been investigating Ms Cafferkey’s conduct.

The council alleges that she “allowed an incorrect temperature to be recorded” on December 29, 2014 and intended to conceal from Public Health England staff that she had a temperature higher than 38C.

Registered NHS nurse Ms Cafferkey travelled to the West African country at the height of the Ebola crisis to help the sick.

She returned to London and then travelled on to Scotland before being diagnosed, and spent almost a month being treated in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

Ms Cafferkey recovered but was readmitted to hospital on two separate occasions after suffering complications linked to the disease, and at one stage fell critically ill.

But she returned to work as a nurse at the Blantyre Health Centre in South Lanarkshire, where she had been employed before volunteering to go to Sierra Leone with the Save the Children charity.

She described at the time how she was “very happy to be alive” and was looking forward to returning to a “normal life”.

However, in the months that followed her health suffered as she had issues with her thyroid, her hair fell out and she had headaches and pains in her joints.

But Ms Cafferkey stressed that she felt lucky because she had not lost her sight as others had done.