Singapore SARS case raises concerns

Inadequate training and poor laboratory practice in a Singapore lab resulted in a 27-year-old postdoctoral student coming down with the first case of severe acute respiratory syndrome for months, reports from the World Health Organization and Singapore Ministry of Health said this week. The postdoc had been studying West Nile virus in a biosafety level three (BSL3) laboratory at the Singapore Environmental Health Institute, where the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus was also under investigation. Although this case poses no public health threat, the Singapore experience highlights concerns about the potential risks arising from labs, said Klaus Stöhr, a scientist with World Health Organization (WHO) Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response. "We have done so much to control the disease...and a minor mistake in a lab could take us back to square one," he told The Scientist. "Very many labs around the world have been working with the virus, not only in samples, but growing the virus and producing concentrated virus material," he said. "Singapore reminded us that very few countries have the capacity to ensure that these labs have the facilities and the personnel and staff operating procedures in place to ensure that BSL3 is achieved."One of Stöhr's concerns is that widespread research with the virus is not adequately regulated. "Too many countries have no regulations or legal requirements for the accreditation and assessment of these labs. Of course, people know our recommendations—we have a very detailed booklet which has just been updated on our website—but this is not enough." "Only a handful of countries have detailed, thought-through regulations and accreditation systems for biocontainment facilities," said Stöhr. "Accreditation means a group of experts coming to inspect everything, including the training, repeatedly, because the staff always changes." The Singapore report recommended that the government consider implementing the accreditation systems of countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States. There are other examples. "Germany has the virus. And Italy. As far as I know, they have no official accreditation system for BSL3 labs," said Stöhr. "There are companies in China trying to produce a vaccine, and you can't test [vaccines] without producing a considerable amount of highly concentrated liquid containing the virus." "This is the time to establish a global biosecurity system for laboratories that deal with dangerous pathogens," Stöhr told The Scientist.Some of the labs in the WHO SARS network also belonged to countries without accreditation systems, such as Hong Kong and France, admitted Stöhr. "But biosafety is a combination of the facility... and the staff and their training. If both work you have a high biosafety level, but you can have an excellently equipped lab and poorly trained staff. The labs in our network have experience with very many more dangerous pathogens than SARS. I would stick my head out very far here and say they are certainly safe with the virus."A leading member of the WHO/Food and Agriculture Organization team that visited China in August to study the animal origins of SARS told The Scientist that in China, "it's the field scientists who are more worrying than the lab scientists."Lin-fa Wang, a project leader at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, said that among Chinese researchers, "If anything can go wrong, it's the sampling in the field. When they go to sample animals sometimes they have to do the cutting on the site, in a village or on a farm, without any containment or hoods."However Stöhr was less concerned. "Certainly if you sample a SARS patient you would always have a mask [and] gloves, and take care you are not infected through your mucous membranes - eyes, nose, mouth and so on. And the same should apply when you deal with potentially infected animals," he told The Scientist. But from the point of view of public health, "There are many more people who kill or eat the animals, without any protection, than sample them," he said.

Singapore SARS case raises concerns

WHO expert says a global biosecurity system needed to keep labs in shape

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