Nurse who contracted Ebola cleared of misconduct by panel

A Scottish nurse who survived Ebola has been cleared of misconduct over her return to the UK with the virus. Pauline Cafferkey (40) was accused of allowing an incorrect temperature to be recorded in a "chaotic" screening centre in Heathrow Airport on her return from west Africa in late 2014, and of leaving a screening area without reporting her true temperature.

An independent panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Edinburgh found three charges against her were not proven and her fitness to practise was not affected.

It ruled that her judgment at the airport in December 2014 had been so impaired by the developing illness that she could not be found guilty of misconduct. Referring to her "exhausted and increasingly unwell state" after her return from Sierra Leone, it concluded: "In your diminished medical state you were swept along by events."

Speaking outside the hearing, Ms Cafferkey's solicitor, Joyce Cullen, said she was "relieved the process is at an end" and stressed that the nurse would have never knowingly placed anyone in danger.

She also criticised Public Health England (PHE), which ran the airport screening area described during the hearing as "disorganised and chaotic".

Ms Cullen said the disciplinary process had been "stressful and upsetting" for her client, and added: "She is delighted that the panel has made the decision she has no case to answer and [that she] is now able to continue her nursing career in Scotland. "

Ms Cafferkey, from Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, became infected with Ebola during a six-week spell working in Sierra Leone towards the end of 2014.

She spent almost a month being treated in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital and went on to have two further admissions to hospital, one with a relapse of the Ebola virus and the other with chronic meningitis.