Part of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital was locked down on Tuesday after a patient with suspected Ebola arrived at the Acute Receiving Unit around 6am. The incident put Ebola in Glasgow back on the city’s medical map, with staff, members of the public and the patient all caught up in the response.
A hospital source said emergency measures were put in place immediately to protect staff and any members of the public. The source added: "The person came to the Acute Receiving Unit, where people are sent by their GP or the health board’s 101 number to avoid having to present at accident and emergency. This was quickly shut down and sealed off from the rest of the hospital."
The same source said the patient was assessed and then moved elsewhere in the hospital for confinement while tests were carried out to establish whether the illness was Ebola or something else. Public Health Scotland said it is working closely with the UK Health Security Agency to assess routes by which travellers may enter the UK from affected countries, and that the NHS has safe procedures in place for detecting and managing such cases.
Public Health Scotland and NHS protocols
Public Health Scotland said the risk from people arriving in the UK from affected areas is low. It also said PHS and NHS boards across Scotland have well established protocols for assessing and testing travellers arriving in the UK from areas affected by Ebola where necessary.
The Public Health Scotland spokesperson said: "PHS and NHS boards across Scotland have well established protocols for assessing and testing travellers arriving in the UK from areas affected by Ebola where necessary. Where required, contact tracing will occur and contacts may undergo clinical assessment and precautionary testing."
That is why the hospital response moved so fast. The unit was sealed off before the case had been resolved, and testing can take several days, leaving the Glasgow site operating under containment rules while clinicians work through the result.
Pauline Cafferkey and Glasgow
The case also revived memories of Pauline Cafferkey, the public health nurse who contracted Ebola in 2014 while working at the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone, during the West African Ebola epidemic. She returned to Glasgow via Casablanca and London Heathrow and was diagnosed with Ebola at Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow’s west end on December 29.
If this latest case is settled as Ebola, it would be the first in Glasgow for over a decade. For now, the practical reality is simpler: part of a major Glasgow hospital remains sealed off, the Acute Receiving Unit is shut, and testing is continuing while public health teams prepare to trace contacts if required.
