Building Biosafety Capacity in Our Nation's Laboratories

Abstract

The 2014 Ebola outbreak revealed biosafety vulnerabilities across the United States. We distributed $24.1 million to health departments to support public health laboratories (PHLs) and sentinel clinical laboratory partners to improve biosafety practices. We used 9 indicators to evaluate PHLs and associated clinical laboratories from March 2015 through April 2018 using descriptive statistics. On average, over 6 reporting periods, 59 awardee PHLs and 4,040 clinical laboratories responded. By April 2018, 92% (57 of 62) of PHLs had conducted at least 1 risk assessment for work with Ebola and another highly infectious disease. The number of PHLs having a policy for risk assessments increased from 32 of 61 (52%) to 49 of 54 (91%). The percentage of awardees meeting the target (80%) for associated clinical laboratories with staff certifications to package/ship rose from 32% (19 of 60) to 46% (25 of 54). The percentage of awardees meeting the target (70%) for associated clinical laboratories with risk assessment policies increased from 18% (8 of 44) to 28% (15 of 54). Awardees reported improvement among Ebola treatment centers/Ebola assessment hospitals with policies to perform risk assessments from 48% (20 of 42) to 67% (34 of 51). Public health laboratories and their clinical partners made progress on their abilities to address biosafety concerns and implement consistent biosafety practices, improving their ability to work safely with biological threats. More attention is needed to address gaps in the clinical community. Support for biosafety activities is critical to continuing to achieve progress.

Keywords: Biosafety capacity; Capacity building; Clinical laboratories; Ebola; Public health laboratories.

Figure 1.

Percentage of awardees that met indicator targets for their public health laboratory (PHL) for the Enhanced Biosafety Capacity Project, October 2015 and April 2018. Of 62 awardees, only 58 responded during initial phone calls about biosafety officer staffing.

Figure 2.

Percentage of awardees that met targets for the network of sentinel clinical laboratories, Ebola treatment centers, and Ebola assessment hospitals in their jurisdiction for the Enhanced Biosafety Capacity Project, October 2015 and April 2018.