EXCLUSIVE: A nurse being treated for the Ebola virus in London has strong family connections in Co Donegal.
Nurse Pauline Cafferkey whose family are from Co Donegal.
Pauline Cafferkey’s late grandmother hails from The Rosses.
The public health nurse, who is from Glasgow, has many relatives living in and around Kincasslagh where her grandmother is originally from the townland of Rannyhual.
Her late grandmother was Annie Cafferkey (nee Sharkey) and she was a sister of former goalkeeper Packie Bonner’s mum Gracie making her second cousins of the former Celtic and Ireland star.
The 39 year old is receiving specialist treatment via a quarantine tent at the Royal Free Hospital in north London.
Chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies said the experimental drug ZMapp, which was used to treat Mr Pooley, the nurse who was the first UK citizen to contract the disease, is “not available at the moment”.
The nurse was part of a 30-strong team of medical volunteers deployed to Africa by the British government last month and had been working with Save the Children at the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone.
She was initially placed in isolation at a Glasgow hospital early yesterday after feeling feverish, before being transferred south on an RAF C-130 Hercules plane.
The healthcare worker had flown from Sierra Leone via Morocco to Heathrow Airport where she was considered a high risk because of the nature of her work and showed no symptoms during screening and a temperature check.
While waiting for a connecting flight to Glasgow she raised fears about her temperature and was tested a further six times in the space of 30 minutes.
But after being given the all clear she flew on to Scotland and took a taxi to her home where she later developed a fever and raised the alarm.
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