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BUMC to step up safety procedures following tularemia infections
Boston University Medical Center “will be enhancing laboratory training and procedures including unannounced safety inspections” in response to tularemia infections that affected three employees last year, BUMC officials announced in an e-mail to Medical Campus faculty and staff on January 19. The previous day, BU officials and public health authorities said publicly that two research laboratory employees developing a vaccine for tularemia fell ill last May after being exposed to the bacterium, which causes in animals and humans the illness commonly referred to as “rabbit fever.” A third laboratory employee became sick in September, at which time it was determined that tularemia had caused the illnesses. All three employees have recovered.
Upon learning of the workers’ exposure, BUMC officials notified the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC). “The BPHC and MDPH began an investigation into the tularemia cases in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control,” according to the e-mail from Elaine Ullian, president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, and Thomas Moore, acting provost of the Medical Campus. “BUMC cooperated fully with this investigation and conducted its own review of the incident led by the chairman of the medical center’s Institutional Biosafety Committee.”
The investigations are still seeking to determine how and when a virulent strain of tularemia was introduced into the bacteria the BU employees were studying, as they believed they were working with a vaccine strain, which does not cause illness. “At this stage of the investigations,” the e-mail states, “it is believed that, while BUMC requested a vaccine strain of tularemia, a mixed strain was received.”
Moore now is leading an effort to “enhance safety training for all researchers” and conduct “unannounced safety inspections of all laboratories on our campus,” reads the e-mail.
21
January 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations