Regional Biosafety and Biosecurity Legal Framework for the African Union Member States

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The World Health Organization (WHO) Joint External Evaluation conducted between 2016-2019, the Global
Health Security Index (GHSI) and the regional consultations coordinated by Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a specialized technical institution of the African Union (AU), highlighted biosafety and biosecurity capacity gaps among AU Member States. To address these gaps and assist Member States in building capacity to comply with international biosafety and biosecurity requirements and regulations, Africa CDC, Pan African Veterinary Vaccine Centre of the African Union (AUPANVAC) and African Union – Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) in collaboration with AU Member States, and it’s Regional Collaborating Centres (RCC) launched the Regional Biosafety and Biosecurity Initiative (BBI). Key among its objective is to develop a regional biosafety and biosecurity legal framework (BSBS) that can be adopted and subsequently incorporated and domesticated in national legislation.

The BSBS legal framework shall provide guidance and underpin biosafety and biosecurity operations among AU Member States by elucidating how laboratories, institutions may handle high consequence pathogens. It will frame the manner in which training institutions and regulatory agencies could build stronger biosafety and biosecurity practices using a One Health inclusive of the human, animal, plant, and environmental sectors. It will define overarching technical requirements for those laboratories and institutions that manipulate and/or store High Consequence Agents and Toxins (HCAT). It will define the training standards for and capacity building requirements and specifications of biosafety and biosecurity professionals. Member States with a pre-existing legal architecture, should use this BSBS legal framework as benchmark to review the adequacy in scope and detail and update their legal arrangements accordingly.
Where legal documents on biosafety and biosecurity do not exist, the Member States can adopt this BSBS legal framework to develop their national legislation.