Ebola virus infection among western healthcare workers unable to recall the transmission route

Introduction. During the 2014-2016 West-African Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, some HCWs from Western countries became infected despite proper equipment and training on EVD infection prevention and control (IPC) standards. Despite their high awareness toward EVD, some of them could not recall the transmission routes. We explored these incidents by recalling the stories of infected Western HCWs who had no known directly exposures to blood/bodily fluids from EVD patients. Methodology. We carried out conventional and unconventional literature searches through the web using the keyword "Ebola" looking for interviews and reports released by the infected HCWs and/or the healthcare organizations. Results. We identified fourteen HCWs, some infected outside West Africa and some even classified at low EVD risk. None of them recalled accidents, unintentional exposures, or any IPC violation. Infection transmission was thus inexplicable through the acknowledged transmission routes. Conclusions. We formulated two hypotheses: inapparent exposures to blood/bodily fluids or transmission due to asymptomatic/mildly symptomatic carriers. This study is in no way intended to be critical with the healthcare organizations which, thanks to their interventions, put an end to a large EVD outbreak that threatened the regional and world populations

Il Real Museo Mineralogico dell'Università Federico II di Napoli. Uno scrigno per le meraviglie della Natura

Storia del Real Museo mineralogico, descrizione delle collezioni e dei reperti più important

Museo on the road: la scienza per il cittadino

Il Centro Musei delle Scienze Naturali ha un imponente patrimonio museale ad alta valenza scientifica, didattica e storica che ha messo a disposizione per la realizzazione del progetto, “Museo on the road: la scienza per il cittadino” cofinanziato dal MIUR, Legge 6/2000. Dalla proficua collaborazione fra operatori museali e cittadini è stato realizzato un percorso educativo in cui i reperti museali sono stati il “mezzo” per veicolare concetti scientifici e trasmettere conoscenza, in maniera semplice ma scientificamente corretta. Quale sede per la realizzazione del progetto è stato scelto San Giovanni a Teduccio un quartiere disagiato della periferia di Napoli. Il percorso educativo, ospitato nella Biblioteca Comunale “Antonio Labriola”, articolato in una esposizione di 150 reperti, plastici, strutture cristalline, attività di laboratorio e seminari, ha cercato di trasmettere ad un pubblico eterogeneo l’importanza del ruolo della scienza nella vita di tutti i giorni ed il ruolo dei musei. I cittadini hanno certamente recepito il messaggio che solo grazie alla conoscenza ci si può adoperare, in maniera vincente, per il vero riscatto socio-culturale del proprio territorio

History Trough Minerals

University of Naples ‘Federico II’ holds a huge patrimony of scientifc collections which testify its lively and high profiled research activity. In fact scientific museums compounding the Centro Museale host exclusively naturalistic specimens and instruments related to teaching and research. Collections are displayed in fascinating XVIII and XIX century rooms which were in some cases the same since foundation. This rich and heterogeneous world had been forgetting since changing in speculative methodologies gradually excluded scientific collections from everyday life of studies and researches. So, as in many other cases, naturalistic collection of Neapolitan university had risked to disappear. To avoid this waste in 1992 University Federico II founded a Centre, independent form departments, with its own regulation, management and financial autonomy. In almost twenty years trying to take care of these collections, cataloguing, restoring and exposing specimens or whole collections, which had been completely forgotten sometimes, many result had been reached. The challenge of Centro Museale is trying to reconcile past and future, communicating scientific information and its long history, at the same time, showing these museums as the place where the history of science had been going on across centuries. That’s why has been projected a virtual tour in which new technologies will allow, in a sense, a ‘rearrangement’ of museums’ collections without changing the historic display, just leaving visitors free to chose perspectives and themes