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 The National Institutes of Health rejected a proposal from New
Orleans-based Tulane University to renew the five-year contract
which expires in November, according to a July 30 letter from NIH
reviewed by Reuters. The expiring contract is worth $15 million.
NIH declined to comment on the decision, citing "federal government
procurement integrity rules."
The facility, at Kenema Government Hospital, was set up a decade ago
to test and treat Lassa fever. Now it is being used to treat
patients stricken with Ebola. Both are hemorrhagic fevers caused by
distinct families of viruses. Ebola is the most lethal, leading to
death in up to 90 percent of cases.
Last week, the facility's director and chief physician, Dr. Sheik
Umar Khan, died after becoming infected with Ebola. Its head nurse
and two other nurses have also died, and some other staff are sick.
The Ebola outbreak, the worst ever recorded, has killed 932 people
across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
As part of the Tulane research project, which was designed to
identify diagnostics and treatment for Lassa, researchers support
the Kenema facility, which has a 5,500 square foot laboratory and
similarly sized hospital ward. Blood samples from infected patients
are used to develop tests and diagnostics.
Funds from the Tulane project support most of the facility's
operations, including $100,000 a year to supplement meager
government salaries received by some 30 staff - including doctors,
nurses, lab technicians and field workers - said Robert Garry, a
professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane, who heads the
program.
The program also supplies laboratory equipment, including protective
garments, pipettes, and all materials needed to analyze blood
samples.
It is unclear whether the facility will be able to raise funds from
other sources to replace the Tulane project money.
FUNDS AVAILABILITY
In the letter to Tulane, a contracting officer for the NIH’s
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Liem Nguyen,
said the proposal had been rejected “based on technical factors,
scientific priority, and availability of funds."
The proposal, the letter added, "falls short of those considered by
NIAID to offer the best opportunities for the most successful
accomplishment of the acquisition objectives."
NIH declined to provide further comment on the matter.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, said he was unaware of the
decision.
It is unclear if U.S. government funding cuts for NIH in recent
years contributed to the decision.
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The Sierra Leone facility’s resources are strained, members of
Tulane’s team say. Dr Daniel Bausch, an associate professor in
Tulane’s tropical medicine department, who was at the facility for
three weeks in July, said last week that constant fatigue among
overworked and poorly trained workers may have led to mistakes. He
saw some staff not wearing protective suits. The number of patients
in the ward has topped 50, far outstripping its capacity.
Scientists and doctors from the World Health Organization and
elsewhere have stepped in to help.
Hemorrhagic fevers, which also include Dengue and Marburg, typically
occur in tropical regions of the world and are spread by infected
animals, insects or humans.
Erica Ollmann Saphire, a professor at the Scripps Research
Institute, which is also involved in the project, said the lab is
the only one in Sierra Leone whose permanent role is to test for and
treat viral hemorrhagic fevers.
"It has all the instrumentation you need to diagnose diseases," she
said.
The program also spends $100,000 a year on a laboratory in Irrua,
southern Nigeria. The lab diagnosed the first case of Ebola in that
country. It is not currently treating any patients.
Without continued funding, Garry said, researchers will be
"scrambling" to find ways to keep the facilities open. Allowing them
to close, he added, "is not an option."
The Lassa ward at Kenema has been funded by the United States for
more than a decade through a variety of grants and contracts, Garry
said.
He said he is hoping other organizations, such as the WHO, may help
in the short term, and he is investigating whether there may be ways
to pull funds from other projects to finance the Kenema operations.
Over the past decade, Tulane and a consortium of other institutions
involved in viral hemorrhagic research has received about $30
million in NIH funding.
(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Michele
Gershberg and Martin Howell)
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