Global Biosurveillance: 2nd Meeting in Biological Threat Non-Proliferation Conference Series

Due to the complex nature of biothreats from either natural cause or malevolent intent, establishing a comprehensive biodefense approach has proven exceedingly difficult. Biological threat nonproliferation is a significant challenge, but must be pursued for effective threat reduction. The global changes in both political and technical aspects raised both new challenges and new opportunities for BioNP. Global Biosurveillance, a critical aspect for both public health protection and biothreat defense, will be the focus for the 2nd conference. This area was seen as having the greatest interest and opportunity at the first conference and from post-conference feedback.

Conference topics will include:

• The concept and the scope of a viable, comprehensive global biosurveillance program that supports both public health and BioNP missions (including human and agricultural infectious diseases)
• Technical approaches to and political concerns on global biosurveillance
• Engagement of the international community
• The current scientific and technical basis to support such a program
• The technologies that need to be developed in the next 3-5 years to enable such a comprehensive program

Contact: Helen Cui, hhcui@lanl.gov