Lab upgrades urged amid Ebola outbreak scare - Thailand

[webfact]

Lab upgrades urged amid Ebola outbreak scare
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- THAILAND NEEDS to upgrade its laboratories in preparation for a possible Ebola outbreak, a virus specialist said yesterday.

Dr Uraiwan Kositanont, president of the Virology Association (Thailand), said the threat posed by the Ebola virus required that labs be boosted to Bio-Safety Level 4 to examine people suspected of having been infected with the deadly virus, which the World Health Organisation places in Risk Group 4.

Thailand only has BSL-2 capacity in its laboratories using bio-safety cabinets and BSL-3 in labs using ventilation systems. which both have a high-cost management.

She said without BSL-4 labs, existing labs places even more cost comparing with other level, adding there’s an ability to could still diagnose cases with various tests such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), antigen detection, serum neutralisation, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay, and virus isolation by cell culture.

Dr Rachana Santiyanond of Chulalongkorn University's faculty of allied health sciences, who is president of the Association of Medical Technologists of Thailand, said the quality of this country's medical laboratories was continuously developed and they were kept in compliance with international standards.

"Thailand's Medical Technology Council uses ISO 15189 standards. So our laboratory has the basics to diagnose samples of deadly microbial diseases following universal precautionary principles," Rachana said.

Last Thursday, a Guinean woman suspected of Ebola infection was tested for a second time by the Public Health Ministry. The blood test later showed a negative result, as she had malaria, not Ebola virus disease.

So far about 1,099 people travelling to Thailand from Ebola-hit countries have been screened, according to the Department of Disease Control, and none has tested positive for the disease.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Lab-upgrades-urged-amid-Ebola-outbreak-scare-30242844.html

-- The Nation 2014-09-09

[terryp]

and the stupidity of media hype continues? ...Thailand would be better advised to get its labs sorted to find help with DENGUE

[shirtless]

Ebola will never come to Thailand, Or so they say.

[Ricardo]

As long as Thailand can diagnose cases, and trace/isolate contacts swiftly, does the country really need cat-4 labs, will there be much research carried-out here ?

Luckily suspected-cases thus far have been found to be negative, just helpful practice-cases, for when it does reach here.

But over in West Africa, the outbreak is still roaring away, with latest-figures reported as 2,105 dead & 3,900+ cases. They're turning-away infected-people from the overloaded isolation-facilities, and "Organisations combating the outbreak needed to scale-up efforts "three-to-four fold", the WHO said.", pretty scary stuff IMO.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29115298

"Prof Neil Ferguson, the director of the UK Medical Research Council's centre for outbreak analysis and modelling at Imperial College London, is providing data analysis for the World Health Organization." and he says "The authorities are completely overwhelmed. All the trends are the epidemic is increasing, it's still growing exponentially, so there's certainly no reason for optimism."

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29060239

So Thai medical-authorities should perhaps rather be preparing for tracing/isolating potentially-infected people, rather than seeking budgets for better laboratories, shouldn't they ?

[whybother]

and the stupidity of media hype continues? ...Thailand would be better advised to get its labs sorted to find help with DENGUE

Ebola is pretty much out of control in western Africa. If other countries aren't ready when the virus turns up, it will be out of control everywhere. That will be MUCH worse than an outbreak of Dengue.

[NongKhaiKid]

Unfortunately big budgets are for some a godsend, should that be a Buddha send, as a lot of the money can be ... posters can fill in the blanks as they see fit.

[Upset]

There are far more dangerous virueses affecting millions of thais already...its called the E-Heir Virus.....symptoms include being xenophobic, grandiose sense of being thai and patriotic, lower intellectual capabilities while still having a illusion of being far superior, face value being very important, corruption and greed being a normalcy, rudeness and stupidness,no sense of moralty, laziness, wanting quick monies, etc, etc.....WHO (the World Health Organisation) has yet to even do anything about this epidemic that has been plaguing thailand for years.

[Strangebrew]

Well you could decrease chances of it coming here by stopping all flights from countries effected But TAT won't be able to lure quality tourists then. Besides they might take over all the scams.