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Winnipeg's fortress of deadly disease
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | 4:13 PM ET Comments8Recommend18
CBC News
From the outside, the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health on Arlington Street in Winnipeg's north end looks like any other fairly new government building. Big with lots of glass and concrete.
The lab - administered by Health Canada — cost $172 million and took 10 years to design and build. It took two years alone to build the concrete box that encloses the Level-4 lab, which occupies a small part of the entire centre.
They waited a year for the massive, monolithic concrete to dry, then covered it with 30 coats of special paint, and then covered the walls and floor with a layer of epoxy 7.5 centimetres thick.
Inside, people work in those space-age suits that protect them from the viruses they're handling.
The facility is pretty secure.
http://www.css.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/crti/invest/rd-drt/0091rd_7-eng.asp
The primary objective of this project is to develop both diagnostic and protective recombinant monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with specificity against target molecules from numerous microbial bioterrorism (BT) agents. The mAbs will comprise a set of tools to address three critical aspects of BT threats: rapid detection of specific microbial agents, prophylaxis, and post-exposure treatment of infected individuals. A further objective of the project is to generate information that will aid in the rational design of vaccine candidates for numerous microbial pathogens. A summary of studies conducted on one bacterial BT agent, Bacillus anthracis , is presented here.
Much of the impetus for the Winnipeg lab — known locally as "the virology lab" — comes from a surge of new diseases in the 1980s, when two new strains of Ebola were discovered, and when the medical community took serious notice of HIV-AIDS.
Shortly after clusters of people starting coming down with flu symptoms in Mexico in March 2009, health officials sent samples to the Winnipeg lab. On April 24, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told reporters that the lab confirmed that a never-before-seen swine flu virus was responsible for the outbreak in Mexico.
The first strains of lethal diseases arrived at the Winnipeg lab in the summer of 2000, a cargo of six of the most deadly viruses in the world. Small vials contained samples of Lassa fever, Marburg and Junin virus, with three strains of the Ebola virus, all flown in from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Security concerns
But, if security requirements are so stringent, and the stuff so deadly, how is it so easily transported over great distances to the lab in Winnipeg? Dr. Ron St. John, the former executive director of Health Canada's Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, says the vials are transported in safety packs, then secured in a triple-container and sealed.
"I would stress that these packages are designed to withstand tremendous impact," Dr. St. John explained. "In the famous Lockerbie crash the only package — the only thing to survive intact in that terrible airplane tragedy — was a safety pack that had an organism in it."
On May 5, 2009, a former researcher at the lab was arrested at a border crossing in North Dakota. He was on his way to his new job at a research lab in Bethesda, Md. Border guards found 22 vials of biological material that he said he had taken from the Winnipeg lab.
The 42-year-old researcher — Konan Michel Yao — said he had been hired by the Public Health Agency of Canada to work as a PhD fellow at the Winnipeg facility. He told officers he was working on a vaccine for the Ebola virus and HIV. The vials didn't contain virus samples, but did contain material he was using in his research into Ebola and HIV.
Yao said he was taking the vials to his new job because he didn't want to start his research from scratch. The Public Health Agency of Canada said there was never a risk to the public. Yao didn't have access to the highest-level pathogens and only worked with non-infectious material.
Not in my backyard
It is no cinch to build a Level-4 lab, and not just for design and construction challenges. A major problem is to get someone finally to sign off on the labs, which means to authorize them and guarantee that they are safe enough for the deadliest diseases in the world.
In 1976, a woman became ill at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and was taken to nearby Etobicoke General Hospital where it was determined that she had contracted Lassa fever. This was enough of a scare to have the hospital shut down for a week.
The Ontario government responded by spending $5.8 million to build a Level-4 lab in Etobicoke. But neighbours complained, the new facility was never opened, and the Ontario government decided these types of facilities are a federal responsibility.
Another high-security lab was built at Toronto General Hospital, on the 11th floor of the Norman Urquhart Wing. It was sealed off from the rest of the hospital, with its own air supply and electrical system, with a special state-of-the-art particulate filtering system. A special team was trained to work in the isolation unit, intended to handle viruses as lethal as Lassa and Ebola. It was completed in 1984, at a cost of $2 million.
But it never opened.
Vickery Stoughton, then president of Toronto General Hospital, blamed that on what he called "bureaucratic ass-covering." Stoughton said government inspectors made frequent checks of the new facility, but not one was willing to sign off on the guaranteed safety of a lab dealing with the deadliest diseases in the world.
"Instead, they'd recommend that another $100,000 or $200,000 be spent to make absolutely sure it's safe," Stoughton said.
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