A Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in Sierra Leone has been cleared of allegations that she put the public at risk by hiding the fact she had a raised temperature after returning to Britain.
Pauline Cafferkey, 40, was infected in 2014, during an outbreak of the highly contagious disease that killed more than 11,300 people in three West African countries.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council, which regulates the professions in Britain, held a two-day hearing finishing on Wednesday in Edinburgh to investigate allegations that Cafferkey had allowed a wrong temperature to be recorded at London's Heathrow Airport on her return.
She was also accused of failing to flag up her true temperature to medical staff at a screening area in the airport.
The panel dismissed both charges of professional misconduct after hearing that she had been impaired by illness as she went through the screening area, described in evidence as chaotic and under-staffed.
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"Throughout her career Pauline has been motivated by a genuine desire to help other people even if this meant putting her own life at risk. She would never have knowingly put anyone in danger," said her lawyer, Joyce Cullen.
Having been given the green light to leave the screening area and fly onwards to Glasgow, Cafferkey then became extremely unwell and was flown back to London to be treated in a special isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital.
She spent close to a month there before she was discharged.
She has continued to suffer from ill health linked to the consequences of her Ebola infection and was twice hospitalised again.
