Thailand introduces Ebola examination kit

BANGKOK, August 26 (TNA) - Thailand, through the Ministry of Public Health's Department of Medical Sciences, has introduced an Ebola examination kit purchased from Germany and China, which can reportedly help identify virulent viral strains, including the deadly Ebola virus, with its high accuracy rate of 90 per cent. When introducing the examination kit in Bangkok on Tuesday, the department's director general, Dr. Apichai Mongkol, told journalists that such the examination kit was ordered from three sources, two in Germany and the other one in China, totally worth 900,000 baht. Dr. Apichai said that the kit will be used to conduct a series of three tests of samples of body fluid of Ebola-infected suspects, namely blood and urine. Dr. Apichai acknowledged that the tests need to be conducted with a closed real-time automatical machine, called the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), in which the suspects' body fluid will be tested to find the lethal virus by a DNA separation solution within a Biosafety Level (BSL) 3 chamber to ensure the highest safety for medical staffs, who will also wear water-proof personal protective equipment (PPE) with air filter, and the most accuracy of the final result, which will be known shortly after the three tests. According to the senior official, the samples will be first collected and kept in a three-layer safest biohazard box at the temperature of 70 degrees Celsius and will be then tested within a BSL 3 chamber. The senior official noted that his department plans to seek a budget of 57 million baht from the Ministry of Public Health to fund the construction of a BSL 4 chamber to ensure the extreme safety of the three tests and to train Thailand's medical personnel to deal with acute communicable diseases. Meanwhile, the Thai Veterinary Medical Association (TVMA) assured that there is a very low risk of any Ebola virus spreading among animals in Thailand, where new emerging diseases, including Ebola, have been strictly watched out to prevent any spreading among local animals, namely monkeys, bats and pigs, since bird flu outbreaks in the past. TVMA President Dr. Sorowit Thaneeto, who is also Deputy Director General of the Department of Livestock Development, under the Thai Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, told a press conference that authorities concerned have, however, ordered a deferment, from all channels, of imported animals from Ebola-affected areas as a precaution. (TNA)