The charity Save the Children said yesterday it would leave no stone unturned to find out how a British nurse contracted Ebola at a facility in Sierra Leone.
Save the Children’s Sierra Leone director Rob MacGillivray told BBC TV that the charity would investigate the circumstances surrounding the infection of Pauline Cafferkey who had worked for the charity at a treatment centre in the country.
“We have put in an extraordinary review to ensure that we do everything, leave no stone unturned, to be able to as far as possible identify the source of this infection,” MacGillivray told the BBC.
Cafferkey, 39, is in a critical condition at the Royal Free Hospital in London, having been diagnosed with the disease last week after she returned to Britain from the West African country. MacGillivray said the investigation would focus on how protective equipment was used and person-to-person contact.
The Royal Free, Britain’s main centre for Ebola cases, successfully treated British aid worker William Pooley with the experimental drug ZMapp after he was flown back to Britain in August.
Cafferkey is being treated with blood plasma from an Ebola survivor and an experimental anti-viral drug.
Meanwhile the clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck and NewLink resumed yesterday at a lower dose after a pause to assess complaints of joint pains in some volunteers, the University of Geneva hospital said. The Ebola virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone.
The Geneva hospital announced on December 11 that its vaccine trial had been suspended as a precautionary measure after four patients complained of joint pains.
Yesterday, the hospital said 10 of 59 volunteers who received the vaccine had felt pains in their joints “similar to rheumatism” after some two weeks, but these symptoms had disappeared rapidly without any treatment.
Swissmedic, the Swiss regulatory agency, and safety committees have approved the resumption of the trial at a lower dose.
Vaccinations have now resumed for the last 56 volunteers, who will receive either a low dose of the vaccine or a placebo, by groups of 15 each week through January, it said.