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ByRaphaelSatter and Maria Cheng TheAssociatedPress WASHINGTON An Ameri- can company that bills it- self as a pioneer in track- ing emerging epidemics made a series of costly mis- takes during the 2014 Ebola outbreak that swept across West Africa — with employ- ees feuding with fellow re- sponders, contributing to misdiagnosed Ebola cases and repeatedly misreading the trajectory of the virus, an Associated Press inves- tigation has found. San Francisco-based Metabiota Inc. was tapped by the Sierra Leonean gov- ernment and the World Health Organization to help monitor the spread of the virus and support the response after Ebola was discovered circulat- ing in neighboring Guinea in March 2014. But emails obtained by AP and inter- views with aid workers on the ground show that some of the company's actions made an already chaotic situation worse. WHO outbreak expert Dr. Eric Bertherat wrote to colleagues in a July 17, 2014, email about misdi- agnoses and "total confu- sion" at the Sierra Leone government lab Metabiota shared with Tulane Univer- sity in the city of Kenema. He said there was "no track- ing of the samples" and "ab- solutely no control on what is being done." "This is a situation that WHO can no longer en- dorse," he wrote. Metabiota chief execu- tive officer and founder Na- than Wolfe said there was no evidence his company was responsible for the lab blunders, that the reported squabbles were overblown and that any predictions made by his employees didn't reflect the company's position. He said Metabiota doesn't specialize in out- break response and that his employees stepped in to help and performed ad- mirably amid the carnage of the world's biggest-ever Ebola outbreak. "Metabiota's team worked tirelessly, skillfully and at substantial potential danger to themselves to as- sist when most of the world was still ignoring the prob- lem," he said in an email. "We are proud of our team efforts which went above and beyond the call of duty." Wolfe said some of the problems flagged were mis- understandings — and that others were planted by com- mercial rivals. The complaints about Metabiota mirror the wider mismanagement that ham- strung the world's response to Ebola, a disease that has killed upward of 11,000 peo- ple. Previous AP reporting has shown that WHO re- sisted sounding the alarm over Ebola for two months on political, religious and economic grounds and failed to put together a de- cisive response even after the alert was issued. The turmoil that followed left health workers in Kenema bereft of protective equip- ment or even body bags and using expired chlorine, a crucial disinfectant. WHO said Metabiota was well-placed to help when Ebola broke out in West Africa because of its expertise with Lassa, a re- lated disease. The agency declined to give any detail about how it dealt with the complaints from se- nior staff about the firm or the status of their cur- rent relationship. In Sierra Leone, Sylvia Blyden, who served as spe- cial executive assistant to the country's president in the early days of the out- break, said Metabiota's re- sponse was a disaster. "They messed up the en- tire region," she said. She called Metabiota's attempt to claim credit for its Eb- ola work "an insult for the memories of thousands of Africans who have died." 'TheViralStorm' Wolfe, a swashbuck- ling scientist sometimes described as the Indiana Jones of virology, has fo- cused his company's work on disease hotspots like West Africa in a bid to sniff out the next big threat. In his book, "The Viral Storm," Wolfe writes that his work is aimed at hunting down "the first moments at the birth of a new pandemic" to prevent its global spread. With a doctorate in im- munology and infectious diseases from Harvard, Wolfe, 45, has found some serious backers. Metabi- ota and its nonprofit sister company Global Viral have received millions in funding fromUSAID,Googleandthe Skoll Foundation, among others. The Department of Defense alone has granted morethan$18millionworth of contracts to the firm, fed- eral records show. In the early months of the outbreak, with WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thin on the ground, Metabiota said it stepped in to help at the request of the Sierra Leonean government. An account posted to its website says Metabiota pro- vided "critical support" in the earliest days of the out- break, organizing training, jointly running Sierra Le- one's Ebola laboratory, as- sisting with outbreak logis- tics and producing daily re- ports for the government. Messages saved to ProMed, a mailing list for outbreak watchers, are up- beat, describing Metabi- ota's tests and how it was teaching Sierra Leoneans how to set up Ebola isola- tion wards. On May 12, se- nior Metabiota scientist Dr. Jean-Paul Gonzalez said preparedness work had "ultimately protected, or at least uniquely prepared, Si- erra Leone." But there were already reports of suspected infec- tions in the country and, within weeks, the virus tore through Sierra Leone, overwhelming the hospital in Kenema where Metabiota shared the 700-square-foot (65-square-meter) lab with Tulane. To some at Tulane, which had a long-established re- search project at the lab, Metabiota's missteps were predictable. The two groups worked side-by-side in an uneasy relationship that observers said sometimes tipped into open conflict. Tulane microbiology pro- fessor Bob Garry questioned whether Gonzalez was the right person to teach Sierra Leoneans how to protect themselves from Ebola. In 1994, the French researcher was at the center of a safety scare at Yale University af- ter he accidentally infected himself with the rare Sabia virus and didn't notify of- ficials there for more than a week. The university put more than 100 people un- der surveillance and or- dered Gonzalez to take a re- medial safety course. Garry said that should have raised a red flag. "Do you really want the person who infected himself withhemorrhagicfevergoing around explaining to people how to be safe?" he asked. Gonzalez referred ques- tions to a Metabiota press representative, who said in an email that the incident happened more than 20 years ago and that Gonza- lez has extensive lab safety experience. But Garry also faced questions; the WHO emails obtained by AP complain- ing about the Kenema lab are as critical of Tulane as they are of Metabiota. Garry acknowledged mistakes but said they were understandable given the chaotic circumstances. "We didn't have the per- sonnel and the infrastruc- ture that was needed to handle the onslaught of cases that were coming," he said. "We were doing the best we had with what we had there." 'They were at war' Asthedeathtollmounted in July, scientists from WHO, the United States and Canada were voicing concerns about what Meta- biota and its Tulane col- leagues were doing at the Kenema lab, according to the emails obtained by AP and interviews with those on the ground at the time. When Gary Kobinger, head of special pathogens at the Public Health Agency of Canada, double-checked some of the facility's work in mid-July, he found wor- rying discrepancies in four of eight tests and identified up to five people wrongly diagnosed with Ebola, among them a worker with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. Kobinger told AP in a telephone interview that the misdiagnoses he caught suggested many more had gone unnoticed. "If you detect two, three, four, five, how many are out there?" he said. The mistakes were dou- bly dangerous in a country where many mistrusted in- ternational workers, who were suspected of spreading Ebola deliberately, said Ber- therat, the WHO outbreak expert. Attempts to reas- sure a jittery public could be "totally ruined if the population does not trust anymore in the diagnostic of the medical teams," he wrote in an email. AP INVESTIGATION Am er ic an c om pa ny b un gl ed E bo la r es po ns e The Associated Press FLINT, MICH. A lawsuit stemming from Flint's lead- contaminated water was filed Monday on behalf of the city's residents against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder as well as other current and former government officials and corporations. The federal lawsuit — which is seeking class-ac- tion status — alleges that tens of thousands of resi- dents have suffered physi- cal and economic injuries and damages. It argues of- ficials failed to take action over "dangerous levels of lead" in drinking water and "downplayed the severity of the contamination" in the financially struggling city. Snyder's spokesman didn't immediately respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment on the suit, which seeks a jury trial and unspecified dam- ages. Numerous lawsuits have been filed on behalf of Flint residents since a public health emergency was de- clared last year. The latest lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven residents. Flint, with a popula- tion of about 100,000, had switched from Detroit's wa- ter system to the Flint River as a way to save money until a new pipeline to Lake Hu- ron was ready. But during those 18 months, the corrosive wa- ter leached lead from the city's old plumbing because certain treatments weren't added to the water. Snyder, whose adminis- tration repeatedly down- played the lead threat, now calls it a "disaster." A report by the state au- ditor general released Fri- day found that state envi- ronmental regulators made crucial errors as Flint be- gan using the new drink- ing water source that would become contaminated with lead. It says staffers in the Department of Environ- mental Quality's drinking water office failed to order the city to treat its water with anti-corrosion chem- icals as it switched to the river in April 2014, but also said the rules they failed to heed may not be strong enough to protect the pub- lic. The report came as crews in the city started to dig up old pipes connecting water mains to homes. No level of lead in the human body is considered safe, especially in children. The river water also may have been a source of Le- gionnaires' disease, which killed at least nine people in the region. CONTAMINATION Cl as s- ac ti on s ui t fil ed b y re si de nt s ov er F lin t wa te r cr is is THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILEPHOTO Water from the Flint River flows through the Hamilton Dam near downtown Flint, Mich. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Health-care workers load a man suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus onto an ambulance in Kenema, Sierra Leone. RedBluffCommunity BloodDrive March 16 • 2-6 PM Veterans Memorial Hall 735 Oak St. Sponsored by the Emblem Club All Participants will receive MyBloodSource Rewards to redeem online! No appointment necessary, please call 530. 243.0160 for more information. RANDAL S. ELLOWAY DDS IMPLANTDENTISTRY 2426 SO. 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