Ebola case in Glasgow confirmed

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A healthcare worker who has just returned from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola and is now being treated in hospital in Glasgow.

The woman, who arrived from Sierra Leone on Sunday night, is in isolation at Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital.

All possible contacts with the case are being investigated, including on flights to Scotland via Heathrow.

UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the woman would be taken to a specialist unit in London.

She will be flown from Glasgow and taken to the Royal Free Hospital in north London “as soon as we possibly can,” Mr Hunt said.

It is expected she will be transferred overnight by air ambulance.

At a news conference in Glasgow, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed that the risk to the general public was very low.

Nicola Sturgeon added that the patient was thought to have had contact with only one other person since arriving in the city, but that all passengers on the flights the woman took will be traced.

“Scotland has been preparing for this possibility from the beginning of the outbreak in west Africa, and I am confident that we are well prepared,” she said, adding that the patient is “stable” and would soon be transferred to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

Source: NHS Choices, UK


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