Brit nurse Pauline Cafferkey faces being struck off over ‘failing to reveal her fever when she returned to UK from West Africa’
EBOLA nurse Pauline Cafferkey could be struck off for concealing that she had caught the disease when returning to the UK.
The Brit medical worker is facing a disciplinary hearing after becoming infected with the virus while working in Sierra Leone in December 2014.
Cafferkey, from, Fife, Scotland admitted letting her temperature be falsely recorded when she got to Heathrow from Sierra Leone with a fever.
A colleague tested the medic, 40, at bove 38°C but a figure under 37.5°C, the upper threshold for more tests, was entered.
She made it through the checks and was passed fit to board a connecting flight back to Scotland.
Pauline, of Cambusland near Glasgow, denies professional misconduct at an ongoing Nursing and Midwifery Council hearing.
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The NMC, which has been investigating Ms Cafferkey's conduct, alleged at that stage that she "allowed an incorrect temperature to be recorded" on December 29 2014 and "intended to conceal from Public Health England staff that you had a temperature higher than 38C".
It was claimed she did not tell Public Health England screening staff who took her temperature at the airport that she had recently taken paracetamol and that she left the area without reporting her true temperature.
Dozens of passengers on her flight north were contacted by Health Protection Scotland, after fears an epidemic could have started in the UK.
Registered nurse Ms Cafferkey travelled to Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola crisis to work with the sick.
She returned to London and then travelled on to Scotland before being diagnosed, and spent almost a month being treated in an isolation unit at London's Royal Free Hospital.
The volunteer recovered but was readmitted to hospital on two separate occasions after suffering complications linked to the disease, and at one stage fell critically ill.
The NMC has the power to strike workers off the professional register.
In July, Ms Cafferkey spoke of her stress over the fact that the misconduct allegations remained unresolved more than 18 months on from her return to the UK.
She told The Sunday Telegraph: "I don't know why it has not been finished. It's very stressful. It would be nice to have closure."
After details of the draft charges emerged in August, an NMC spokesman said: "Since the NMC's case examiners considered the allegations and drafted charges, we have received further evidence.
"The final charges the panel will consider will be determined in light of this new material."
Ms Cafferkey said the NMC apologised for mistakenly releasing the allegations on their website in advance of the hearing.
She told the BBC: "I would very much hope that after the case has been considered by the panel the matter will be at an end."
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