On October 15-25, the "International Workshop on Biosafety Laboratory Management and Techniques" hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, and organized by Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), CAS was successfully held in Wuhan, Hubei. 24 foreign scientists from 22 different countries including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Brazil, Bulgaria, Poland, Cambodia, Cameroon, Croatia, Congo (DRC) and Egypt participated in the workshop.

The opening ceremony of the workshop was held on the morning of October 16. Prof. YUAN Zhiming, the President of the Wuhan Branch of CAS, Mr. SHEN Jian, the Counselor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Prof. GAO Rongbao, the Principle Investigator of the National Health Commission of China, Ms. YANG Li, the Secretary General of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, and lectures from WIV and all the trainees attended the opening ceremony. The ceremony was hosted by Prof. WANG Yanyi, the Deputy Director of WIV. YUAN Zhiming and SHEN Jian expressed their warm welcome to all the guests who participated in the workshop. YUAN Zhiming said that the CAS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China jointly host this workshop, which will further promote cooperation between China and other countries in the field of biosafety. SHEN Jian pointed out that China is committed to promoting international cooperation in bio-security, actively providing bio-security public goods to the international community and strengthening the capacity-building of the developing countries, aiming at building up global bio-security defense in cooperation with all countries. Daniel Feakes, the Chief of Implementation Support Unit (ISU) of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), said in a video address that the international community should further strengthen the BWC mechanism and promote global biosafety governance and he believes this workshop will contribute to the implementation of this Convention. GAO Rongbao congratulated the smooth initiation of the workshop, and hoped that the relevant training could further strengthen the construction of a global prevention and control system on public health security to jointly safeguard the human health.

The scientists participated in a 10-day training on biosafety laboratory management and techniques at WIV. During this period, Daniel Feakes, Prof. LIANG Mifang and LIU Jun from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Prof. ZHANG Weiwen from Tianjin University and senior experts from WIV were invited to give lectures. The training courses cover biosafety laboratory introduction, bioethics and Biosafety policy, laboratory management system, biological risk assessment, preservation and transportation of virus resources, and experimental practices. In addition, WIV also held a seminar on Code of Conduct for Biological Scientists, and organized visits to the Microorganism and Viruses Culture Collection Center and Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of CAS.

In recent years, the global outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases have shown an upward trend, which seriously endangers human health, economic development and social stability. The Biosafety Laboratory is an important infrastructure for disease control, clinical diagnosis and scientific research. It is a scientific research support platform for countries to respond to sudden public biosafety emergencies. In this regard, strengthening the management of biosafety laboratories is an important means of developing biotechnology research and development and preventing biosafety risks. This workshop aims to provide trainings on technologies of infectious disease prevention and control and management to personnel in developing countries, promote their strengths of national biosafety laboratory management, effectively improve the global biosafety level, and further expand scientific and technological cooperation between China and developing countries. Through the training, the scientists have deepened their understanding of China's biosafety management experience, and have expressed their willingness to give full play to be bridges and ties to better publicize and promote the training results, further strengthen bilateral scientific research cooperation, and jointly fulfill international biosafety responsibilities for prevention and control of infectious diseases.