Workers from Doctors Without Borders unload emergency medical supplies to deal with Ebola
Workers from Doctors Without Borders unload emergency medical supplies to deal with an Ebola outbreak in Conakry, Guinea, March 23, 2014. Reuters

Sue Ellen Kovack, a 57-year-old nurse in Cairns, Australia, is suspected of being an Ebola patient. She returned from Sierra Leone, the hub of the epidemic, according to health officials.

Last month, she had valiantly volunteered with the Red Cross to help patients of the disease, as she felt that there was no one else. "If not me, then who?" she had asked Daily Mail. She said that as she possessed the skills to help people, she would like to use them.

The chief health officer, Jeanette Young, said that she had been treating patients on behalf of Red Cross in Sierra Leone. She also got herself quarantined at home since she returned on Saturday. A"low-grade fever" hit her on Thursday morning, after which she was checked into Cairns Hospital at about 1 p.m.

Doctors have taken her blood tests, and have sent a sample to Brisbane for testing on Thursday afternoon. By evening or Friday afternoon the reports will be out. According the rules laid down by the government, she had isolated herself at home, checked her temperature every day and then recorded a spike in her temperature at about 37.6 degrees, said Dr Young.

After giving interviews to the media about her journey, she was also keeping everyone updated on Facebook. "I'm a little bit nervous, a little bit anxious but healthily anxious I think," she said to The Cairns Post.

Her co-passengers in the plane also need not fear that she would expose them to any risk, assured Dr Young. Even though, it is a deadly disease, Ebola cannot be transmitted through sneezing or coughing. Unless a person has become unwell, she cannot be infectious. Unless one touches bodily fluids, such as vomit, blood or diarrhea, a person cannot contract the disease.

Meanwhile, in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, gravediggers came back to resume work. They had protested low pay. U.K. will send 750 staffers to help and bail out the country.

So far, almost 3,900 have died of the disease and 8,000 have been infected so far, according to WHO reports.