Alison Schafer is a trained psychologist working with the international humanitarian agency World Vision.

On January 12, she went to ­Sierra Leone from her home in Melbourne to work on the social, emotional and psychological effects of the Ebola epidemic, which during the past year has killed more than 10,250 people in ­Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

For a fleeting moment last spring, the epidemic sweeping West Africa might have been stopped. But the opportunity to control the virus, which has now caused more than 7,800 deaths, was lost.

A health worker who just returned to Scotland from Sierra Leone has been diagnosed as the country's first Ebola case, Scottish authorities said Monday. The Scottish government said on its website that infectious-disease procedures have been put into effect, and the patient has been isolated and is being treated on the Gartnavel Hospital campus in Glasgow.

The head of the UN Ebola response mission in West Africa has told the BBC there is still a "huge risk" the deadly disease could spread to other parts of the world. Tony Banbury declined to say if targets he had set in the fight against Ebola, to be achieved by Monday, had been met.