A Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in Sierra
Leone has been cleared of allegations that she put the public at risk by hiding
the fact she had a raised temperature after returning to Britain.
Pauline Cafferkey, 40, was infected in 2014,
during an outbreak of the highly contagious disease that killed more than
11,300 people in three West African countries.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council, which
regulates the professions in Britain, held a two-day hearing finishing on
Wednesday in Edinburgh to investigate allegations that Cafferkey had allowed a
wrong temperature to be recorded at London's Heathrow Airport on her return.
She was also accused of failing to flag up her
true temperature to medical staff at a screening area in the airport.
The panel dismissed both charges of
professional misconduct after hearing that she had been impaired by illness as
she went through the screening area, described in evidence as chaotic and
under-staffed.
"Throughout her career Pauline has been motivated
by a genuine desire to help other people even if this meant putting her own
life at risk. She would never have knowingly put anyone in danger," said
her lawyer, Joyce Cullen.
Having been given the green light to leave the
screening area and fly onwards to Glasgow, Cafferkey then became extremely
unwell and was flown back to London to be treated in a special isolation unit
at the Royal Free Hospital.
She spent close to a month there before she was
discharged.
She has continued to suffer from ill health
linked to the consequences of her Ebola infection and was twice hospitalised
again.
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