The parents of the British nurse who survived Ebola have backed his decision to return to Sierra Leone and revealed that their son felt he was destined to care for the sick.
Before his second stint in the disease-hit country, Will Pooley told the Guardian that he could not stand “idly by” and watch more people die, despite the concerns of his friends and family.
His parents, Robin and Jackie Pooley, spoke of their pride at their son’s bravery in the facing the risk of catching the disease again.
“‘We knew from the start that he would go back. We were sort of counting down the days … knowing him we were quite aware that he hadn’t finished with his task in Sierra Leone,” Jackie Pooley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She said she did not try to dissuade her son from returning to Africa. “You bring up your children to be independent, you want them to live happy and fulfilled lives … Looking at the pictures of him when he was working out there he looked happy – he looked as if he was doing what he really wanted to be doing. You can’t put a spanner in the works when your children have found something that really fulfils them ...
“Very few people find that sort of fulfilment in their work. We can only support him and we do 100%.”
Robin Pooley added: “When I spoke to him about looking happy, he said: ‘Dad, I felt it was what I was made for this’. And he’s lucky.”
The Suffolk nurse has been told that he may have immunity from the disease, but there is no scientific evidence for this. In his interview for the Guardian, Pooley said he would take the same kind of stringent precautions as the other health workers treating victims of the virus.
Pooley has begun working at an isolation unit at a hospital in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, after arriving in the country on Sunday. Before he left, he said his potential immunity should help allay the concerns of his family.
He said: “I know my mum and dad are worried but they support me because they know this is something I have to do.
“My potential immunity is very reassuring for them, or at least it should be, and I will be returning in a more organised fashion than when I was out there originally.”
Robin Pooley said it was impossible to know whether his son could catch Ebola for a second time. “Nobody is clear because the experience of the disease is so limited,” he told the BBC.
“They think he has some immunity, but there’s no certainty. Anyway, he has got to pretend he could catch it again in order to show best practice to the people he will be training.”
The Pooleys said Britain and the international community was failing to do enough to stop the spread of Ebola.
Robin Pooley said: “I know Britain is doing more than a lot of countries, but the west has got to step up to this, and what’s being done already is inadequate … the disease is doubling every four weeks.”
When Pooley contracted the disease in Sierra Leone in August he was flown back to the UK and treated in a special isolation unit at the Royal Free hospital in London. He recovered after receiving the experimental drug ZMapp, and has since donated some of his blood in case it offers clues about how to treat the virus.