Accelerating Action in Global Health Security: Global Biosecurity Dialogue as a Model for Advancing the Global Health Security Agenda.

Biosecurity and biosafety measures are designed to mitigate intentional and accidental biological risks that pose potentially catastrophic consequences to a country's health system, security, and political and economic stability. Unfortunately, biosecurity and biosafety are often under-prioritized nationally, regionally, and globally. Security leaders often deemphasize accidental and deliberate biological threats relative to other challenges to peace and security. Given emerging biological risks, including those associated with rapid technological advances and terrorist and state interest in weapons of mass destruction, biosecurity deserves stronger emphasis in health and security fora. The Global Biosecurity Dialogue (GBD) was initiated to align national and regional donor initiatives toward a common set of measurable targets. The GBD was launched by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), with support from Global Affairs Canada's Weapons Threat Reduction Program and the Open Philanthropy Project, and in coordination with the government of The Netherlands as the 2018-19 Chair of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) Action Package Prevent-3 (APP3) on Biosafety and Biosecurity. The GBD provides a multisectoral forum for sharing models, enabling new actions to achieve biosecurity-related targets, and promoting biosecurity as an integral component of health security. The GBD has contributed to new national and continent-wide actions, including the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's new regional Initiative to Strengthen Biosafety and Biosecurity in Africa. Here we present the GBD as a model for catalyzing action within APP3. We describe how the benefits of this approach could expand to other GHSA Action Packages and international health security initiatives.

Development of a Biosecurity Checklist for Laboratory Assessment and Monitoring.

INTRODUCTION: Laboratory biosecurity is of continuously growing interest due to increasing concerns about deliberate misuse of biological materials and emerging biological risks. These risks continue to be magnified by globalization, the rapid pace of scientific development, and dual-use technologies. Worldwide laboratory capacities are expanding, which calls for concrete actions to improve laboratory biosafety and biosecurity practices to protect researchers and the community. Hence, laboratories require comprehensive biorisk management programs to minimize the risk of accidental and deliberate release of infectious biological materials. OBJECTIVE: Malaysia has prioritized the concern of national biosecurity and aims to consolidate laboratory biosecurity performance to detect and prevent the deliberate release of biological agents. METHODS: Two 3-day workshops were organized over the course of four months in which Malaysia collaborated with The Netherlands. This bilateral engagement aimed to integrate biosecurity practices in their national biorisk management programs, and resulted into a comprehensive biosecurity checklist for laboratory assessment and monitoring. RESULTS: This biosecurity checklist is based on Malaysian and Dutch expert opinions and national and international guidelines and regulations. The biosecurity checklist is a survey-driven tool that consists of a set of concrete questions for each key biosecurity area, which are discussion points for assessment. CONCLUSION: We display a practical biosecurity checklist for laboratory assessment and monitoring. Although the presented checklist was the template for the specific Malaysia checklist, it could serve as a template for other countries.