Current Projects

  • Biosafety and Biosecurity (BS&S) are key aspects of country health security capacity to prevent, detect, respond, and report public health emergencies. It is often difficult to measure BS&S capacity, particularly the roles and actions of non-government entities such as academia, private companies, and think tanks, outside of response efforts. This project, built off discussions and previous collaborations with the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan aims to develop a comprehensive method for assessing regional BS&S capacity for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), drawing from internationally recognized monitoring and evaluation frameworks and developed open-source tools. This methodology will then have the capacity to perform regional assessments for BS&S capacity for other interested regions. Further, throughout this work, the ERG team has created a series of tools, including assessments of monitoring and evaluation frameworks, which can be found on our website. This project is funded directly by the ERG Program.

  • The uncontrolled, unregulated, and rapid establishment of laboratories in surge response to a major biological threat including protracted pandemics, leads to non-compliance with biosafety, biosecurity, and waste management due to a variety of issues including lack of knowledge, resources, trained personnel and political will. There has been a surge in laboratories, particularly private facilities across the region to receive, process, test and dispose of specimens for SARS-CoV-2. These facilities could be designated to continue post-pandemic in handling other high consequence pathogens or potentially pandemic pathogens with little to no oversight. It is essential to ensure that public and private health laboratories adhere to appropriate biosafety and biosecurity practices. Globally, the establishment of consortiums has had a positive effect on countries, where experiences are exchanged, protocols are prepared, and their use ensured. This project, in partnership with Global Health Development/EMPHNET, will partner with key facilities across Libya and Morocco to ensure that public and private health laboratories adhere to appropriate biosafety and biosecurity practices. We hope to develop and establish common protocols across laboratories linking guidelines and capacities to international standards and frameworks and a web portal for the consortium in order to share documents, templates, tools and to support interactive discussions. This project is funded by the U.S. Department of State, Biosecurity Engagement Program.

  • The project builds on existing laboratory capacity and One Health projects in North Africa to establish a regional network of expertise and best practice. In collaboration with Global Health and Development/EMPHNET, ERGP will partner with the Libyan National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and National Centre for Animal Health (NCAH) and the Tunisian General Directorate of Public Health, Ministry of Health and Veterinary Services as well as other relevant stakeholders to improve multisectoral coordination for the surveillance, detection, and response to priority transboundary diseases and especially dangerous pathogens. This collaboration will strengthen relationships and coordination for cross-border zoonotic surveillance, detection and response between Libya and Tunisia. Strengthening a nation’s response to a priority health event is necessary to detect and prepare for deliberate and naturally occurring outbreaks of EDP and other diseases. Our project aim is to develop a framework and supporting implementation tools that will be used to facilitate information exchange for robust and efficient surveillance, detection, and outbreak investigation of priority pathogens between Tunisian and Libyan stakeholders. This project is funded by U.S. Department of State, Biosecurity Engagement Program.

  • This project builds on previous capacity building efforts across key public and veterinary health laboratories to assess, develop and implement best practices for waste management, including the application of our self-laboratory assessment tool (S-LAT). ERGP is collaborating with our partners at Global Health Development/EMPHNET, the Libyan National Committee on Biosafety and Biosecurity (LNCBB) and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to create a waste management technical working group (TWG) to develop guidelines and standard operating protocols (SOPs) for biological waste management across public health facilities in Libya. The TWG involves key ministries as well as laboratory leadership with the objective of strengthening overarching policies and establishing operational guidance at the facility level. SOPs are currently being pilot tested across five key laboratories in Libya. This project is funded by the U.S. Department of State, Biosecurity Engagement Program

    Link to S-LAT tool

    Link to SOP packets