Ebola in the United Kingdom

Ebola virus disease in the United Kingdom and Ireland has occurred rarely in four cases to date, namely three health workers returning from treating victims of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, and a single case in 1976, when a laboratory technician contracted the disease in a needlestick injury while handling samples from Africa.

On 5 November 1976, Geoffrey Platt, a laboratory technician at the former Microbiological Research Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, contracted Ebola in an accidental needlestick injury from a contaminated needle while handling samples from Africa.

William Pooley, a British nurse who contracted the disease while working in Sierra Leone as part of the relief effort for the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, was medically evacuated by the Royal Air Force on a specially-equipped C-17 aircraft.

[11] Criticism was levelled at screening protocols at UK points of entry, which mainly consisted of taking a person's temperature and asking a series of questions.

[16] In October 2015, Cafferkey was diagnosed with late complications caused by the Ebola virus hitherto considered unusual, and readmitted to the Royal Free Hospital.

[17] Her doctors stated that she had been critically ill due to neurological complications from meningitis, and that she had been treated using a highly experimental anti-viral agent.

[25] In 2016, proceedings were initiated against Cafferkey by the Nursing and Midwifery Council alleging that she had allowed an incorrect temperature to be recorded during the screening process upon returning to the UK from Sierra Leone in 2014.