Health Ministry blames Pasteur Institute for Zika mistake
After social media users criticised the Ministry of Health for a Zika false alarm over the weekend, the ministry’s Department of Communicable Diseases pointed the finger at the Pasteur Institute for the misinformation. The ministry and the World Health Organization on November 18 issued a joint statement indicating the first Zika case in the Kingdom had been confirmed in a 44-year-old man from Kampong Cham. But early on Saturday morning, the ministry retracted its statement, saying the case was determined not to be Zika after further testing. After some people took to social media to admonish the ministry to verify its information before making it public, the Department of Communicable Diseases maintained it wasn’t to blame. “This is the fault of the Pasteur [Institute], which is a five-star lab service that did the work carelessly, which the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization depend entirely on,” reads a message posted by the department on its official Facebook page.
