Ebola blunder kills scientist

A Russian scientist died after pricking herself with a needle containing the deadly Ebola virus.

Antonina Presnyakova was carrying out research on a possible vaccine for the disease - for which there is no known cure - when the accident happened on May 5. She died 14 days later.

The tragedy, at the Vektor State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology outside Novosibirsk in central Siberia, was the third such case to have happened there. Vektor was a biological weapons laboratory during the Soviet era.

In 1988, a researcher died there after accidentally contracting the Marburg virus. Another worker was infected with the same disease in 1990, but survived.

Ebola is spread by contact with body fluids, including sweat and saliva. Outbreaks are rare, and no one knows where the virus lives when it is not infecting humans. The disease usually kills its victims so fast that it also destroys the host for the virus.