Sustainable Infectious Disease Surveillance and Biosafety

Maintaining human, animal, and environmental health is of critical importance to sustainable development around the globe. Establishing, enhancing, and maintaining infectious disease surveillance labs to protect people and animals from disease requires time and in addition to monetary capital for construction, quality biosafety laboratories require significant investment in personnel, training, and ongoing maintenance. Current efforts to develop and enhance laboratory capacity around the world have improved global biosafety, yet challenges remain.

Biosafety laboratory regulations will be reviewed along with past projects to develop individual labs and regional capacity. Construction of new state of the art facilities will be reviewed along with the training and support staff required to maintain some of the world's most established biosafety laboratories. The cost of both construction and operation of a biosafety lab will be reviewed, along with the potential impact of these costs in resource limited settings. Options to improve sustainable laboratory construction (materials and construction processes), operation (balancing energy efficiency and biocontainment) and future development (planning for renovation and arranging to analyze high-risk samples in global collaborating centers) will also be put forth for discussion with the biosafety and sustainable development community.