A
health worker who was diagnosed with Ebola after returning to Scotland
from Sierra Leone has arrived at a specialist treatment centre in
London.
The woman, who travelled to Glasgow via Casablanca and London Heathrow, was taken to the Royal Free Hospital.She is understood to have been flown to RAF Northolt in a military plane after leaving Glasgow in a convoy.
Passengers on flights she took to the UK are being traced, but officials say the risk to the public is very low.
The woman left Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow just after 03:00 GMT on Tuesday.
Six police cars accompanied two ambulances as she was taken to Glasgow Airport. She has been taken to an isolation unit at the north London hospital from the RAF base in west London.
UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said NHS safety measures in place were working well.
Mr Hunt, who chaired an emergency Cobra meeting on Monday evening, said the government was doing "absolutely everything it needs to" to keep the public safe.
"We are also reviewing our procedures and protocols for all the other NHS workers who are working at the moment in Sierra Leone," he added.
Prime Minister David Cameron is chairing another Cobra meeting to discuss the matter later on Tuesday.
The patient, who had been working with Save the Children in Sierra Leone, arrived in Glasgow on a British Airways flight on Sunday but was placed in an isolation unit at Gartnavel Hospital on Monday morning after becoming feverish.
Under UK and Scottish protocol, she was moved to the high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital.
UK nurse William Pooley - who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone earlier this year - was successfully treated at the same facility.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who chaired a meeting of the Scottish Government Resilience Committee on Monday, said the risk to the public was "extremely low to the point of negligible".
She added the patient was thought to have had direct contact with only one other person between arriving in Glasgow and attending hospital on Monday.
A second health worker who returned from West Africa recently is being tested in Aberdeen for Ebola, it has emerged.
But Ms Sturgeon said there was only a "low probability" the woman also had the disease as she has not had direct contact with anyone infected with Ebola.
This latest incident will raise questions about the screening process in place for passengers leaving West Africa and arriving at Heathrow.
Public health officials say the woman was taken aside on arrival in the UK and her temperature was taken - the procedure followed for all incoming health staff who say they have been in contact with Ebola patients.
Her temperature was found to be normal and she was not feeling unwell, so she continued her journey to Glasgow.
Someone with Ebola only becomes infectious once they develop symptoms. In this case, that only became apparent after she arrived in Scotland.
The task of contacting the passengers and crew on the flights she took is now under way. That will be complicated, but officials are insisting the risk to those people is extremely low.
Efforts are being made to trace the 71 other passengers who travelled on the same flight from London to Glasgow.
A British Airways spokesman said: "The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority and the risk to people on board that individual flight is extremely low."
A telephone helpline has been set up for anyone who was on the BA 1478 flight which left Heathrow Airport on Sunday evening. The number is 08000 858531.
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