Briton With Ebola Cured After Taking New Drug

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A British military health worker who became infected with Ebola while in Sierra Leone, has been declared free of the virus.

Corporal Anna Cross, 25, was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital on 12 March and was the first Ebola patient in the world to be given the experimental drug MIL 77.

Speaking at a press conference in London, Cpl Cross thanked the medical team who looked after her and said she cried when she heard she was free of the virus.

"They are an absolutely incredible bunch of clinicians; incredibly skilled, incredibly intelligent," she said. "Thanks to them, I'm alive."

Cpl Cross had been working at a British built Ebola crisis centre in Kerry Town, southwest of the capital Freetown when she was diagnosed with the disease.

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A man rests outside the clinic.

A woman is comforted after medical officials remove her husband, who is suspected of having the disease.

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Officials try to prevent themselves from spreading the disease.

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A local who has just brought his brother to the centre. He had to rely on plastic bags tied around his hands to try to protect himself.

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A man thought to be infected with ebola waits for treatment.

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She was evacuated back to the UK by the RAF after becoming the third Briton to test positive for the virus.

"I was diagnosed by one of the military doctors out there," she said. "They did a blood test on me, then they came and told me personally. It was somebody that I knew really well, and I knew they were gutted to tell me."

Describing how she dealt with being treated as a patient after working as a nurse at the facility, Ms Cross said the experience of others in the hospital made her strong.

"I had treated a patient in the facility and the next day I was sitting with him. So it was nice, in a sense, because I felt like we were having the same experience.

"I have seen patients who got really sick and died but he was doing really well, which was encouraging for me."

Cpl Cross said her family were delighted to learn of her recovery.

"They are really thrilled," she said. "They are fighting to look after me at the moment."

MIL 77 is a close relative of the drug ZMapp, which scientists claimed healed 18 monkeys who were given a lethal dose of the virus. Doctors at the hospital acquired the drug from a company in China.

Cpl Cross is the first person in the world to be treated with the drug after choosing to do so following "careful consideration," the hospital said.

Although she has no plans to return to Sierra Leone, Cple Cross intends joining the military as soon as she is fit again.

"I have to do a lot of physical work, it is going to take me a long time," she said.

British nurses Pauline Cafferkey and Will Pooley both survived the disease after being treated in the UK. Like Cpl Cross they contracted the highly-contagious disease while also treating sufferers in Sierra Leone.

The outbreak has killed more than 9,500 people in West Africa.

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