Adding insult to injury

The case of the British scientist who needed limbs amputated not long after arriving in New Zealand to work at an ESR lab is just madness, writes The Marlborough Express in an editorial.

Madness that it took so long for the Labour Department to admit that it may have been the lab where Jeanette Adu-Bobie contracted the disease, and not New Zealand in general.

The stark issue now is why did it take the department so long to come to such an obvious conclusion and who else has been put at risk with its obfuscation.

Dr Adu-Bobie arrived in New Zealand in March 2005 to begin a five-month study visit at ESR's laboratory in Porirua.

She is an eminent researcher on meningococcal vaccines. She was in New Zealand for just 20 days and at ESR for just seven days when she contracted meningococcal septicaemia.

In a matter of weeks she had both her legs, her left arm and the fingers of her right arm amputated.

In its own review of the situation, ESR found that a lab worker such as Dr Adu-Bobie was no more likely to catch the disease than the general population. EST found it also took all practicable steps for the control of biological hazards.

It was left to the scientist and the media to raise concerns about the standards in New Zealand labs.

The Department of Labour does not. It finds in a review of the case that there is no need for changes to the New Zealand lab standard handling meningococcal bacteria.

Now this is the Department of Labour that used to house OSH. Most New Zealanders would see OSH as being very disciplined when it came to imposing health and safety standards on the country. In fact it had something of a reputation for being very, very rigorous. So it is a little odd that it missed the large flashing lights and very big red arrows indicating something was wrong in the case of Dr Adu-Bobie.

It was incredible that campaigning to get things changed in labs was for a large part left up to the scientist. She went back to Britain and pointed the department in the direction of research that suggested lab workers had a higher risk of infection.

It wasn't until ACC stepped into the picture that the Department of Labour took another look a the case. ACC stated in June this year that the balance of probabilities overwhelmingly suggested Dr Adu-Bobie contracted meningococcal disease while in the lab. ACC found that in the 20 days she spent in New Zealand, including seven working into research on meningococcal vaccines, it was obvious she would have contracted the disease at work.

The Labour Department has since agreed.

Duh!

- The Marlborough Express