Project News

Epidemic of Ebola virus Disease (EVD), first originated December 2013 in Guinea, West Africa, is spreading rapidly as like as fire in the field into neighboring countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, was confirmed to be extending to oversea developed countries such as USA and Spain. WHO has reported confirmed cases of infected people and victims, 8,914 and 4,447, respectively, as of 14 Oct. Under these under these circumstances, there is increasing possibility of its invading even into Vietnam, despite being so far from West Africa. It prompted the Ministry of Health, Vietnam through NIHE and WHO Vietnam to approach the JICA-NIHE project to urgently support NIHE in order to establish the laboratory diagnosis of Ebola virus by inviting specialists from NIID Japan. The project, then, immediately responded positively in cooperation with JICA Headquarter and responsible sections of NIID, and organized a training course of laboratory diagnosis for Ebola virus from 6 Oct. to 10 Oct., 2014 in NIHE by inviting Dr. Shuetsu Fukushi from NIID and seven trainees from NIHE, Pasteur Institute in HCMC, National Hospital of Tropical Medicine in Hanoi, and National Hospital of Tropical Infectious Diseases in HCMC in order to establish the first step of laboratory diagnosis for Ebola virus in Vietnam.

Dr. Fukushi gave trainees lectures covering from basic scientific knowledge on Ebola virus such as virological and current epidemiological characteristics to safe and practical procedure for inactivation of suspected specimens and the outline of general genetic detection of the virus. And then trainees learned in practice how to safely and practically deal with the suspected samples in a BSL-3 laboratory, NIHE. The training course contained the well-organized demonstration by Dr. Fukushi and workshop by trainees for the genetic detection methods of a conventional nested RT-PCR and Realtime RT-PCR with specific primers and probes, which are recognized as useful in an international workshop on Filoviridae including Ebola virus, and antigen-capture ELISA specific to NP protein of Ebola virus developed in NIID. Trainees kept it in mind that it is important to handle the samples, in strict accordance with biosafety concept, with proper use of PPE and biosafety cabinets in order to protect themselves from being infected. All of trainees were confirmed to be able to have basic ability to detect the viral specific genes by themselves in a workshop, in spite of a slight fluctuation in the sensitivity, in the training of genetic and virus antigen detection.

The trainees are expected to reconfirm their ability of diagnosis in each laboratory by themselves and their colleagues and to share information and cooperate with each other and Dr. Fukushi. Harmonious cooperation among persons concerned could make it possible to organize a timely and appropriate training course for preparedness against possible outbreak of Ebola virus in Vietnam, which is based on the continuous reliance among researchers both of NIID and NIHE. The project staffs would like to appreciate cooperation of persons concerned in this response against the possible outbreak of Ebola in Vietnam and to expect this support might pave the way to prepare the possible outbreak in Vietnam.

Practice of inactivation step in BSL-3 laboratory, NIHE

Participants in the Ebola training course