ALERT – Even as we continue to face the risk of nuclear contamination and even meltdown at the Zaporizhya nuclear power plant in war-torn Ukraine, there is now a “high risk of biological hazard” after fighters seized a national laboratory in Sudan.
The lab holds measles and cholera pathogens, as well as other hazardous materials.
This according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which warned that power cuts were making it impossible to properly manage material at the lab and added that workers can no longer access the lab.
“This is the main concern: no accessibility to the lab technicians to go to the lab and safely contain the biological material and substances available,” said Saeed Abid, the WHO's representative in the country, Reuters reported.
Fighters “kicked out all the technicians from the lab… which is completely under the control of one of the fighting parties as a military base,” Abid said.
Officials noted that a broad range of biological and chemical materials are stored in the National Public Health Laboratory in the capital Khartoum.
Abid added: “There is high risk of biological hazards because in that lab, we have already isolates, we have measles isolates as well as cholera isolates.”
The lack of power is also putting depleting stocks of blood bags stored at the lab at risk of spoiling.
Officials said it was unclear who was behind the occupation of the lab. The city has been ravaged by fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The fighting has turned residential areas into battlefields.
Joe Biden's national security team is continuing to talk to Sudan's rival military leaders to work towards a durable end to the fighting and humanitarian arrangements, a White House spokesperson said on Tuesday.
But good luck with that.
Air strikes and artillery have killed nearly 500 people and wounded over 4,000.
The fighting has also destroyed hospitals and limited food distribution in a poor nation already dependent on foreign aid for a third of its 46 million people.
The WHO has reported 14 attacks on health facilities since fighting erupted April 15 and is relocating staff to safety.
The U.N. refugee agency forecast that hundreds of thousands of people might flee to neighboring countries. It is bracing for up to 270,000 people to flee Sudan into neighboring Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
“With civilians leaving Khartoum in cars and buses, the streets of one of Africa's biggest metropolitan areas are now largely emptied of ordinary daily life, with those still in the city huddling at home while fighters roam outside,” reported Channel News Asia (CNA).
“The situation has become very dangerous, including in areas not under bombardment,” French journalist Augustine Passilly, who has worked in Sudan since 2020, told reporters on a poor telephone line as she tried to cross the border into Egypt.
“There is nothing left in stores, no water, no food. People have started to go out armed, with axes, with sticks,” she added.
Pillaging of homes in abandoned neighborhoods is reportedly increasing, and the RSF said it had ordered its commanders to “put an end to recklessness and looting.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Rerun Wuhan virus But from a crude state
with everything going on there, no one thought of clearing out the lab???
So much for the ‘gain-of-function’ research conducted by men of advanced knowledge without corresponding depth of human feeling and conscience. Granting power of life and death to these wanton genies is like placing a machine gun in the hands of a three-year-old.