Saturday 7 February 2015

Well, things are moving forward.

A while back I alluded to pressing a 'big red button': I've volunteered to work in Sierra Leone in the Ebola diagnostic lab. There's a training course at the beginning of March, and based on how that goes I may then get a place on one of the teams out there. We'll have to wait & see. My brother is already well ahead of me - he flies out next week to begin his tour of duty.

Despite all the scare stories surrounding ebola, I don't believe this to be especially dangerous - it will just involve handling samples in laboratory conditions. The worst aspects are likely to be the heat and requirement that volunteers do not have social contact (in case they get infected with something transmissible).

We'll see what happens - there's a fair chance I won't be selected & don't go, because I've not worked in this kind of containment regime for a long time and my background is immuno-diganostics using antibodies, rather than molecular-dignostics using DNA/RNA.


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