Abstract

To understand how vulnerable are a society, an economy and a state in the face of a biohazard, one should attempt to identify any potential holes in the national biosafety system, such as the lack of important components or technologies for biological monitoring and the inadequacy of existing analytical methods used to prevent or counteract biogenic threats. In Russia, biological monitoring is quite advanced. However, the agencies that ensure proper functioning of its components lack collaboration and do not form a well-coordinated network. Each of such agencies alone cannot provide comprehensive information on the subject. In the Russian Federation, there are at least 4 state-funded programs that collect epidemiological data and are quite efficient in performing the narrow task of monitoring infections. But because there is no central database where epidemiological data can be channeled and subsequently shared, these agencies do not complete each other. This leaves the Russian society, economy and state vulnerable to biogenic threats. We need an adequately organized, modern, fully functional and effective system for monitoring biohazards that will serve as a basis for the national biosafety system and also a tool for the identification and elimination of its weaknesses.

Highlights

  • IntroductionA situation is classified as an emergency when it has such a strong negative impact on the normal activities of the population that it can be likened to a national or international security threat [1, 2]

  • Another two important concepts used in this review are a biological risk, which is a probability of damage to human health and/ or the environment caused by a biohazard, and a biological threat defined as an unacceptable biological risk [1]

  • The metagenomic approach and next-generation sequencing (NGS) constitute a method for creating a comprehensive profile of a pathogen covering its antibiotic resistance, the ability to produce toxins and other pathogenic factors and the ability to pass these factors on between species

Read more

Summary

Introduction

A situation is classified as an emergency when it has such a strong negative impact on the normal activities of the population that it can be likened to a national or international security threat [1, 2]. Another two important concepts used in this review are a biological (biogenic) risk, which is a probability of damage (of different severity or scope) to human health and/ or the environment caused by a biohazard, and a biological threat defined as an unacceptable biological risk [1]. It is not the extraordinary outbreaks of emerging or imported infections that contribute the most to morbidity and economic damage but traditional seasonal endemic diseases, including ARI, flu, acute intestinal infections, chickenpox, HIV, and viral hepatitis [3]

Objectives
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call