WHO seeks answers from Russia over Siberian lab worker's unexplained death

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that it does not know what caused the death of a lab worker in Siberia amid concerns about plague, and urged Russia to share more information. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, said the agency does not know the "causative agent" behind the woman’s death on October 2 and added, "this is why we need more information".

Russia has said the woman died of pneumonia, describing it as a "typical" acute respiratory viral infection, and WHO said Russian health authorities have found no recent plague cases. At the same time, Van Kerkhove said, "We don’t understand how she was infected," underlining the questions that remain around the case.

In brief statements, Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, has not linked the case to pneumonic plague. It has only said that "extensive" testing found no evidence that the lab worker’s illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.

The comments from the WHO suggested that the UN health agency still has more questions than answers about the situation at the laboratory, which focuses on plague and was founded about a century ago to study the disease in a region where it is endemic.

Since the lab worker’s death, Russian authorities have released little information about the case. The incident has been marked by secrecy and claims that it could have been caused by pneumonic plague. While the case has drawn global concern, Russian state television and other state-controlled national media have largely avoided the subject, and some state-backed news outlets withdrew earlier reports. Overall, the WHO has said it needs more details from Russia as uncertainty remains over what caused the woman’s death.

With PTI Inputs

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