Jersey health worker is not Ebola victim

Thursday 12 March 2015

The Islander working in Sierra Leone with the British Army is not the woman who is due to be flown back to England after contracting Ebola, her husband has confirmed.

Victoria Atherton, a microbiologist at the General Hospital, has recently begun a 12-week stint with the British military in Ebola-ravaged country.

When the government confirmed yesterday that a female British military healthcare worker had tested positive for Ebola and was to be flow back home, there were fears that she was the one affected.

But her husband – Leighton Jenkins – confirmed this morning that he had spoken briefly to his wife yesterday and she had told him she was fine,

“I had a quick phone call from Vicki yesterday just to reassure me that it’s not her,” he said.

“She has been down there for three weeks, and she has another nine weeks to go.

“She is doing a role very similar to the role that she does here at the General Hospital in Jersey in microbiology. It’s a job that she is trained for, she is very experienced and highly professional.

“I can only guess that there is an element of shock that one of their colleagues there has contracted the virus.”

Victoria – an Army reservist – is one of up to 700 British military personnel working to help the west African country through the Ebola crisis.

She has worked in Jersey for 19 years.

British nurses Pauline Cafferkey and Will Pooley both survived the highly-contagious disease after contracting it while treating patients in Sierra Leone last year.

A Public Health England spokesman said: "We can confirm that a UK military healthcare worker in Sierra Leone has tested positive for Ebola. Medical experts are currently assessing the situation to ensure that appropriate care is delivered. A clinical decision on whether the individual will be medically evacuated to the UK for treatment will be taken in due course."