Possible Ebola exposure at CDC

[Peter1469]

Possible Ebola exposure at CDC

Sloppy procedures may have exposed a scientist to the disease.

Researchers studying Ebola in a highly secure laboratory mistakenly allowed potentially lethal samples of the virus to be handled in a much less secure laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, agency officials said Wednesday.


One technician in the second laboratory may have been exposed to the virus and about a dozen other people have been assessed after entering the facility unaware that potentially hazardous samples of Ebola had been handled there.

[sachem]

Human error. Always gonna be a variable.

[ace's n 8's]

I suspect this will be the last that you may hear about this, zero accountability.

[donttread]

Actually the CDC is one of the very view government agencies I view as competent and efficient. Maybe I'm wrong though

[waltky]

Graft an' corruption hits the Red Cross...

Red Cross apologise for losing $5m of Ebola funds to fraud
Fri, 03 Nov 2017 - Auditors found bills for fraudulently overpriced supplies and salaries for non-existent aid workers.

The Red Cross has confirmed that more than $5m (£3.8m) of aid money was lost to fraud and corruption during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Auditors found overpriced supplies, salaries for non-existent aid workers and fake customs bills. The disease, which raged between 2014 and 2016, claimed at least 10,000 lives. It required a massive humanitarian operation costing hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it under control.

Ebola claimed at least 100,000 lives across west Africa

As Ebola spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the Red Cross Federation in Geneva was dispersing cash donations to the national Red Cross societies in each of those countries - altogether a sum of about $100m. An investigation by Red Cross auditors has revealed that in Liberia $2.7m disappeared in fraudulently overpriced supplies, or in salaries for non-existent aid workers. In Sierra Leone, Red Cross staff apparently colluded with local bank workers to skim off over $2m while in Guinea, where investigations are ongoing, around $1m disappeared in fake customs bills.

The Red Cross told the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva that it is deeply sorry for the losses. The organisation adds that has introduced stricter financial rules, and promised to hold any Red Cross staff involved to account. Fraud involving donor money is every aid agency's nightmare, our correspondent says. The Red Cross is the world's best-known humanitarian organisation, and this revelation will be damaging, she adds.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41861552

See also:


Scientists Solve 50-Year-Old Mystery About Breakbone Fever
November 2, 2017 • For decades, scientists have noticed something particular about a mosquito-borne virus: The second infection can cause your blood vessels to leak, like with Ebola. Now scientists think they know why.

In 1954, a mysterious disease struck children in Manila. They were showing up at hospitals with internal bleeding. Their blood vessels were leaking. Over the next few years, similar outbreaks cropped up every rainy season. And then in 1958, a massive outbreak hit Bangkok. More than 2,500 children were hospitalized. About 10 percent of them died. That year, an American doctor, working on polio in Southeast Asia, began searching for the culprit. Eventually, he isolated a mosquito-borne virus — dengue — and, in the process, launched a 60-year-old medical mystery.


The four dengue viruses originated in monkeys and independently jumped to humans in Africa or Southeast Asia between 100 and 800 years ago. Dengue remained a relatively minor, geographically restricted disease until the middle of the 20th century. Known as "breakbone fever" because of the joint pain it can bring, dengue had been causing problems for decades, maybe even centuries. But it rarely caused hemorrhaging or death. Why had it all of a sudden become so dangerous? Had the virus mutated? Was there an additional virus — or environmental factor — boosting dengue's potency? Or did a previous infection with dengue somehow make a person more vulnerable to this deadly form?

During the study's 12-year period, researchers collected more than 41,000 blood samples from more than 8,000 children in Nicaragua.

Over the past 50 years, scientists have accumulated more and more data pointing to the last hypothesis. Now a study, published Thursday in the journal Science, finally appears to nail down why. "This is a rock-star study," exclaims Jean Lim, a virologist at Icahn Medical School at Mount Sinai, who wasn't involved in the study. "I think it will be a benchmark paper." Of course, some scientists in the field are still skeptical and want still more proof, as Science's Jon Cohen reported. But the findings also open up some intriguing theories about why Zika became such a threat in certain places of South America.


In the study, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, followed about 6,600 children in Nicaragua where dengue circulates. For 12 years, the researchers drew the children's blood annually and measured their concentrations of dengue-binding antibodies — molecules the immune system makes to destroy viruses. Then the researchers looked for connections between severe dengue cases and antibody levels. "If a child developed dengue, we could go back to the banked antibody samples and say, 'OK, is there something about the child's antibody levels that are different than that of the healthy kids?' " says Eva Harris, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study.


MORE