EXPERT COMMENT
Reducing opportunities for human error must be a top policy priority to reduce the risk of potentially catastrophic laboratory accidents involving high-consequence pathogens.
Recent global health emergencies have exposed the vulnerabilities that arise from inadequate capacity and capability to detect outbreaks rapidly and contain them before they escalate and spread uncontrollably.
For example, the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014-16 and the COVID-19 pandemic not only killed thousands and millions of people respectively, they also devastated economies and undermined global health security.
Laboratories are a crucial part of the system for disease surveillance, helping to detect outbreaks early, assist a robust response and recovery, and carry out research to improve protection against threats from high-consequence pathogens.
For laboratories to fulfil that role, effective biosafety and biosecurity measures are an absolute priority.
Biosecurity measures to prevent the deliberate malicious use of pathogens continue to receive international attention, though much remains to be done.
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