AN EAST Lancashire nurse who spent her birthday treating the victims of the Ebola virus in West Africa has been given a medal.

Julia Hogan, who works Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust’s Contraception and Sexual Health Service (CaSH), has been rewarded for volunteering to travel to the heart of the epidemic in Sierra Leone.

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Julia spent five weeks working in a British-funded treatment centre in Makeni, a designated Red Zone, caring for patients with suspected or confirmed cases of the disease.

She wrote about her time in a town under lockdown online in ‘Updates From a Lancashire Nurse Volunteering in Sierra Leone’.

By the end of her time on the front line she noted that the outbreak was being brought under control, with fewer admissions and more people being discharged after two negative tests.

Julia, who lives in Nelson, said: “The discharge of survivors is a huge celebration. Patients leave the red zone through the shower and place their hand print on the survivor wall.

“Then they walk towards the exit accompanied by a procession of drumming, dancing and singing by all the staff and other survivors.”

Julia was honoured at 10 Downing Street, where Justine Greening, secretary of state for international development, presented Julia with a medal which features a portrait of the Queen on one side with the words ‘For Service’ and ‘West Africa Ebola Epidemic’ on the other, alongside a flame on a background showing the virus.

Julia said: “It was a real honour to be presented with the medal. I feel extremely privileged to have been given the chance to work with the amazing team over there including the nurses, it was such a challenging and difficult environment, yet they made the circumstances bearable and the support teams always made sure that we were safe.

The medal is the first campaign medal awarded by the UK Government for a humanitarian crisis response.