The National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) has set up its project plan for 2022 and finalised its activities for the stated year, to make sure that it works with other stakeholders and agencies to ensure that human safety and security.
The director-general of NBMA, Dr. Rufus Egegba, who made this known to the media, said biosafety and biosecurity will, through the genetically modified organism (GMO), ensure that people are safe, prevent harmful products in the environment and that product are not used to cause harm to human health.
He listed other activities for the year-in-view as “Education and public awareness on biosecurity issues, biosecurity risk and threat assessment management and information dissemination, procedures to improve automated inventory management of harmful biological materials, monitoring and controlling the use of bio-chemicals, identification of best practices to standardise electronic inventory documentation and management system in the laboratory, biosecurity import analysis, management of dangerous/invasive species and genotype.
“Establishment of containment and confinement facilities for controlled organism that may pose threat to human health, biodiversity and the environment. Acquisition and installation of walk-through testing booths, establishment of National Biosecurity Information Management System.
“Sensitisation and awareness creation, development of biosecurity operation instrument.
“National symposium on biosecurity, media/digital awareness in all geo-political zones and biosecurity outreach/awareness projects.
“The National Biosecurity Human Resources Development Plan will revolve around early warning biosecurity threat strategy and biosecurity emergency response strategy,” he added.
Also, Ebegba said 2022 will see the kick-start of the African immersion course on Biosafety and Biosecurity, as well as training on data portability and digital sequencing as he further emphasised the need for compliance to biosafety sensitisation, risk assessment, surveillance and compliance.
He further revealed that outreach/ awareness and cooperation programmes, advocacy visits, processing biosafety applications, national survey and tracking of GMOs and inspection of GMO farms companies and research institutes will be some of the activities undertaken in the year-in-view.
