EU/UNICRI Project C4
Short
name: EU/UNICRI Project C4
Title: Biosafety and Biosecurity
Risk Management for Georgia
Geographical
Scope: South East and East Europe
Participating
Countries: Georgia
Duration: 24 months
Role: Partner (implementation of
biosafety and biosecurity training course)
Consortium
Leader: National Center for Disease Control & Public Health
of Georgia
Contracting
Authority: EU with the support of UNICRI
OBJECTIVES
The project aims to reduce biological threats in Georgia through raising awareness of staff working on biological material in Georgian institutions. Knowledge of biosafety aspects and protective measures are at a fairly low level in Georgia, moreover, that there is no biosafety officer’s specialization that would support to establish safe and secure work practices. The project envisaged to institutionalize biosafety officer’s status, which is one of the major contributing factor in the laboratory and field work in order to protect the lab environment through monitor and control measures.
ACTIVITIES
The project aims to achieve this by preparing of about 60
specialist selected from a variety of institutions, who will undergo training in
biosafety and biosecurity on the basis of National Center for Disease Control and
Public Health (NCDC) and by its training program. The training program will be
developed based on adoption of existing training materials and by considering of
risk assessment analysis. In the first stage there will be determined all the gaps
and inaccuracies identified during risk assessment conducted in the selected
institutes working and handling the biologically hazardous materials. The obtained
results allow us to focus on what aspects need to pay attention while developing the
training materials, to determine which training model and design will be appropriate
to develop, how to divide the target groups’ by considering of their needs.
With the aim to strengthen professional capacity in the field of biosafety, 8
specialists from laboratory network will be sent to the leading European
universities, who will be formed as biosafety officers. These specialists will serve
as trainers in the training activities planned in Georgia at the next stage in order
to share their knowledge to other colleagues. This interaction will increase the
overall awareness among medical and veterinary staff. Training workshops will be
held at NCDC, where the selected candidates from those institutes, where initial
risk assessment was conducted will participate. The training sessions will include a
theoretical and practical materials, scenarios on decontamination of biologically
hazardous materials and initial response actions to the operating procedures;
Final accord of the projects is to arrange a broad public discussion between the
beneficial institutes (management, trained staff), governmental officials from
medical and veterinary field and all interested parties to discuss challenged in
biosafety/biosecurity legislation and introduce recommendations considering the risk
assessment analysis.
