Mobile High-Containment Biological Laboratories Deployment: Opportunities and Challenges in Expeditionary Deployments to Outbreak Response.

Abstract

Existing biosafety guidelines and biosecurity policies do not adequately address the Increased deployment of mobile high-containment biological laboratories (MBSLs) to manage disease outbreak response demonstrates potentials for rapid diagnosis of risk group 3 and 4 pathogens and allows for research under the biosafety level (BSL)-4/3 environment. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate limitations in current biosafety and biosecurity guidelines to address the unique operational environment and new and varied international stakeholders involved in these deployments. Current biosafety best practices guidelines and biosecurity policy and regulatory directives are crafted mostly toward conventional high-containment biological facilities and may not be readily applicable to the MBSLs. Although the pilot MBSLs reported in published literature have adopted multiple safety precautions to reduce exposure risks and have modified process flows in the constrained space to basically meet the proximate requirements for epidemic response, there are no systematic risk assessments for these sophisticated BSL-4/3 mobile laboratory infrastructure-deployed in locations with poor public health infrastructure backup and security problems and handling highly pathogenic agents in constrained environments-with potentials for failure, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined. The probability of potential occupational exposure and risks to the local general environment may require a reassessment of the biosafety best practice management procedures for MBSLs to deal with these contingencies.