Brave British nurse contracted Ebola while treating patients after doctors fled

The British nurse who contracted Ebola while treating patients with the virus in Sierra Leone after their doctors fled has been flown to London for treatment. He was last night transported on a special RAF flight from Sierra Leone before being rushed into an isolation unit at a London hospital.

According to his friend and colleague Gabriel Madiye, the 27- year-old male nurse had left for the city of Kenema after hearing that fearful doctors had abandoned their patients.

Mr Madiye, who is the executive director of the Shepherd’s Hospice in Freetown, said: “He said to me, ‘Gabriel, I want to go to Kenema and provide care for Ebola patients. It was really not my wish to let him go but he told me that he has a great responsibility because patients were abandoned and were without care.

“Somebody needed to care for them so that is why he left.”

Mr Madiye said his friend had arrived in the country in March to provide palliative care for patients with HIV, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.

Mr Madiye said he spoke with him at the airport: “He sounded very positive and promised that he would contact us after two weeks, after going through treatment. He’s very positive that while he is in Britain he will recover.”

The Department of Health confirmed that the man was kept in a tent-like isolation unit during the flight and while being transferred by military ambulance to London’s Royal Free Hospital.

The decision to fly him back was taken after Public health experts assured would not trigger an outbreak in the UK.

In the words of Professor Tom Solomon, director of the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool,“We have facilities in the UK for caring for people with haemorrhagic fevers. Medical services in Sierra Leone are very strained at the minute.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said:“The UK has well established infection control procedures for dealing with cases of imported infectious disease and these will be strictly followed to minimise the risk of transmission while the patient is in transit and receiving treatment at the Royal Free Hospital.”

No Ebola cases have so far been reported in the UK but a total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded across West Africa.

Spanish Priest, Miguel Pajares, 75, became the first European to die from the disease on August 12, five days after he was flown out of Liberia.