The Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola volunteering in west Africa is being transferred by military-style aircraft to a specialist unit in London from hospital in Glasgow.

The patient, who has not yet been named but is in a stable condition, was taken on board the aircraft within a specialist quarantine tent from Glasgow airport earlier on Tuesday morning, surrounded by medical staff in protection suits.

Thought to be a nurse with NHS Lanarkshire, she will be taken into the UK’s high level isolation unit at the Royal Free hospital in north London – the unit which successfully treated British nurse William Pooley who contracted Ebola last August.

The hospital said in a statement: “The Royal Free hospital can confirm that it is expecting to receive a patient who has tested positive for Ebola. The patient will be treated in the high level isolation unit (HLIU).”

The nurse was admitted to one of Scotland’s main infectious diseases units at Gartnavel hospital in Glasgow early on Monday morning, after falling unwell only a few hours after returning from two months volunteering at a Save the Children Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone.

Health experts treating the nurse, the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed on UK soil, said she was “quite stable” and showing few signs causing clinical concern, raising hopes she would survive the disease.

Dr Alisdair MacConacchie, a consultant in infectious diseases for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Consultant, who had been treating the patient, said she had had no contact with other parts of the the NHS or any accident and emergency facility.

“She [is] quite stable and not showing any great clinical concern at the minute.”



Asked about the patient’s prospects, he said that being clinically stable at this stage “should translate into a good prognosis”.