Ebola nurse working at NHS hospital that saved his life

The first British healthcare worker who caught and survived Ebola is working as an NHS nurse in the hospital that helped save his life.

He spoke to the BBC while working nights in A&E at the Royal Free Hospital in north London.

In an exclusive interview, Will Pooley said everyone should "honour and remember" the African healthcare staff who fought the disease.

He was flown back to the UK from Sierra Leone in an RAF airlift a year ago.

Mr Pooley, 30, spent a week in a special isolation unit at the Royal Free, where he was treated with the experimental drug ZMapp.

He recovered quickly and returned to Sierra Leone in October to help efforts to contain the virus, which has claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa in the past year.

The latest figures from the World Health Organization show there have been just three new Ebola cases in the past week - all from Guinea.

Mr Pooley has been at the Royal Free for about three months. I accompanied him as he returned to the unit where he began his admission by crawling to his bed through a plastic tunnel.

Two separate rooms each contain a bed surrounded by plastic tents. The unit is, in effect, a self-contained hospital.

'Really unpleasant death'

Mr Pooley told BBC News: "It feels like a lifetime has passed since I was here, and I'm grateful to be alive.

"But my whole year has been colored by the death, shortly after my discharge, of a nursing sister and colleague in Africa, Nancy Yoko.

"I know what treatment I received because of where I'm from. She died a really unpleasant death.

"She and a clutch of other staff there died protecting all of us from Ebola.

"Their story has been lost in some ways. We should remember them and honor them."

He paid tribute to his "compassionate and skilled" colleagues in A&E, saying he was "emotionally connected" to the Royal Free after his Ebola treatment.

He added: "I bump into nurses in the lift who, a year ago, were saving my life."

BBC