The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Madurai News : WHO’s training course in bio-safety begins in Madurai

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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
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WHO’s training course in bio-safety begins in Madurai

Staff Reporter

25 delegates from 10 countries are participating in the five-day global meet

— Photo: K. Ganesan

GENERATING AWARENESS: (From left) B.K. Tyagi, Director in-charge, CRME, Madurai; Madama Bourare, Head, Department of Zoology from Mali; Yeya Toure, Leader, BL 5, WHO/TDR, Geneva; and Ali A. Mohammadi, Scientist, WHO/TDR, Switzerland, at a training programme in Madurai on Monday.

MADURAI: The second ‘World Health Organisation (WHO) - Tropical Disease Research (TDR) Asian Bio-safety Training Course’ to create awareness about bio-safety/bio-security in laboratories that carry out advanced research on hazardous substances began here on Monday.

Organised by the Madurai-based Centre for Research in Medical Entomology (CRME), a laboratory under Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a total of 25 delegates from 10 countries are taking part in the five-day meet.

V.M. Katoch, Director-General of ICMR, who inaugurated the first conference held in Madurai in June, sent a message of appreciation for this meet.

B.K. Tyagi, Director in-charge of CRME, told The Hindu that the objective was to apprise researchers of the measures to be adopted by laboratories carrying out sophisticated research on bacteria, virus and other kinds of organisms that could be hazardous to health.

At present, many research studies were under way to study epidemics and disease outbreaks. Research personnel needed to know that they were also subject to exposure and be aware of the materials they were working on, said Dr. Tyagi. Yeya Toure, Leader, BL 5, WHO/TDR, Geneva, Switzerland, thanked Central State and local authorities for their support to the earlier bio-safety meet, which was the first such programme to be held in Asia.

These different activities ae part of a WHO framework to provide support to countries in terms of developing guidelines and principles to deal with potential use of genetically modified vectors, he said.

The framework involves Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, India and Thailand, which are working in collaboration with bio-safety training centres that develop the principles, he said. “We have funded three regional training centres with one for Africa coordinated by Mali, one for Asia coordinated by India and hosted by CRME, and one for Latin America,” said Dr. Yeya Toure.

Ali A. Mohammadi, Scientist, WHO/TDR, Switzerland, said that the WHO was organising a lot of such bio-safety courses throughout the world with one held last week for the Interpol with respect to bio-terrorism.

Madama Bourare, Head, Department of Zoology from Mali; R. Selvaraj Pandian, former member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the CRME; D.V.P. Raja, Director and Secretary, Madurai Institute of Social Sciences, who is also Chairman of the Ethics Committee of CRME, were present at the inaugural session.

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