[TheGuardian] --- When Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey was admitted back into the infectious diseases unit of the Royal Free hospital in London on 9 October, nine months after recovering from Ebola, and then became critically ill, all the previous assumptions about the long-term effects of this virus had to be torn up.
--- Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at Nottingham University, is one of those who admits to real surprise. There are a lot of unknowns about Ebola, he said, "but I don't think anybody would for one minute have expected complications quite as serious as they certainly appear.
---- Doctors will now be on the alert for signs of long-term health problems in any of the western survivors. Unfortunately, the decimated health systems of west Africa are in no position to spot the danger signs among their many thousands of survivors. |