In a lab-office at the Special Pathogens Unit of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, three of us stood around my laptop watching Final Cut Pro ingest footage from a mini-DV tape recorder. One of many investigative studies filmed over the last ten plus years in search of a reservoir for the Ebola virus.
“I was old then doing that,” Dr. Swanepoel commented watching himself wrangle a bat.
“If you were old then doing that, what did you do when you were young?” I asked smartly.
Bob grinned under his large tinted wire frame glasses, “I was doing as many girls as I could.” We laughed.
At 72 years, Dr. Robert Swanepoel is as sharp, witty and energetic as someone in his middle ages, or perhaps younger. That was the idea those who’ve before spent time with him impressed upon me. He did not disappoint.I sat behind Bob in his office sipping a Singapore knockoff of Nescafé, which for an instant coffee was surprisingly good. I was on my second cup. Bob scrolled through pictures from previous outbreaks and field investigations and painted a deeper story to the virus with each instance.
“So why has it taken so long to isolate the virus?” I asked.
“Timing.” On a used sheet of paper, Bob drew two circles, one within the other representing the basic structure of a cell. He labeled the inside circle ‘nucleus’ and its surrounding space ‘cytoplasm’, noting each one as headquarters and factory respectively. “If this were Henry Ford’s assembly line, the headquarters sends out a blueprint to the factory in the form of messenger-RNA, or we call it mRNA. The factory assembles many spare parts, but inefficiently produces more than it needs.”
He dotted the cell’s interior and continued, “Windscreens, tires, steering wheels—nucleic acids to build proteins for a virus.” A third circle was drawn on the cell’s outside and labeled virus. Again more dots. “So of all those parts, you get a few viruses with all these spares. We were always seeing the parts, but never the whole virus because we weren’t catching it at the right time of production.” Bob went on into more detail, involving the factors involved with determining the ‘right’ time and the tests used.
I asked Bob about Kitum cave.
“The Dutch schoolboy’s family lived on the Kenya side; he went in on the Kenyan side.”
The next day following lunch, Bob led me to a tall brown speared fence. Inside the fence is a three story isolated brick building, two large stainless steal vents piped into the walls.
“This is our maximum security lab,” Bob explained. “There are only two like this in the world. Here and at the CDC.”
There are more labs like it sprouting up throughout the world, but this lab was the second to be built a year after the Centers for Disease Control constructed the first high containment lab in 1978. “I am going to take you inside, but I cannot take you onto the floor. We are under surveillance now being close to operational again.”
The lab is under the process of being remodeled, and after four years in the process should open again by the end of the year. We crossed through a narrow opening through the gate and entered from the back of the lab. Beside a bright red biohazard flower emblem in small letters, a sign read: BSL4; for Bio-Safety Level 4, also known as a ‘P4’ or ‘Hot Lab’. Within these walls, the most infectious diseases known to man including at the top of the list Ebola and Marburg are grown and studied. Bob swiped his card key, the red LED light turned green, and he opened the door. The heightened risk of bio-terrorism has made such facilities a security fortress, and as of right now, I do not have clearance to photograph or film anything.
In contrast to many of the other hallways I’ve walked through at NICD, the paths skirting the outside of the lab proper breathe a sterile slick laboratory atmosphere of expansive white walls, pipes and polished steel. We passed a series of narrow windows looking in at glove box workstations, tables and storage closets and cabinets. Hanging from the ceiling, a number of yellow hoses.
“Those hoses are what you connect to your suit for air-intake for your suit,” he walked past a couple steal boxes marked, ‘Autoclave’. “Here you can put something in and close the door for someone to access from the other side with out it being incinerated, but anything put in from the lab is automatically autoclaved.”
Down another corridor, and through a series of open airlocks, we could look onto the lab floor and through to a locker storing yellow spacesuits. The lab directly in front of us is labeled, ‘Animal Room 2’. On one wall are a dozen cages for small animals including rats up to perhaps guinea pigs. Between this room and another lab leading to the suit room is a double heavy door airlock. The space between those two doors acts as an intermediate shower room decontaminating an individual crossing one area into another.
The decontamination and undressing procedure is a cumbersome and timely process. Coffee is not recommended, as bathroom breaks require exiting the lab. Wearing a diaper is a touchy subject and is useful for long stints inside the suit. From what I gather, people do not freely admit to wearing a diaper even if they do so.
The hair on my arms stood and I couldn’t help stop smiling excitedly. “You know Bob, to me this is an equivalent to visiting the space shuttle.” And going inside would be equivalent to going into space—or close to in my book.
“The engineering and control for this lab is on par with the space shuttle, monitoring everything to prevent contamination. There is a lot of money built into here,” Bob added.
In contrast, my visit to the developing Ugandan Virus Research Institute (UVRI) a week earlier in Entebbe illustrates the use of a barebones operation. Primarily built for HIV research and immunology, the limited BSL3 laboratory is authorized to handle viruses like Ebola with very specific restriction. The CDC, through the introduction of the BSL3 lab, is fostering a long-term relationship with the Ugandan government to establish a foothold in east Africa for VHF (Viral Hemorrhagic Fever) testing.
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