British health workers with Ebola treated at Royal Free Hospital, 2014-15
Several British health workers infected during the 2014-15 West Africa Ebola epidemic were flown home and treated in London, and all survived.
This summary was written by AI to complete the context; it is not based on a current source.
During the 2014-15 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the worst on record, several British health workers caught the virus while treating patients in Sierra Leone. They were treated at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, which has a high-level isolation unit built for dangerous infectious diseases.
The first was William Pooley, a nurse from Suffolk who fell ill in Sierra Leone and was flown home in August 2014. He received an experimental treatment, ZMapp, and was discharged within weeks. He later returned to West Africa to keep working.
Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse who had worked with Save the Children in Sierra Leone, was diagnosed in Glasgow at the end of 2014 and moved to the Royal Free in the new year. She recovered, though she later became seriously ill again with complications linked to the virus. A military medic, Anna Cross, was also treated there in 2015 after a possible exposure, and recovered.
These cases showed that Britain could fly out and safely treat infected staff. They also prompted debate over airport screening and over how returning health workers should be monitored.
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