Project Profile: Biosafety from Mexico to Egypt

PandemicTech senior advisor Luis Ochoa Carrera, the past President of the Mexican Biosafety Association and the BSL-3 laboratory coordinator at InDRE in Mexico City, undoubtedly fits this description. Mr. Ochoa was tapped by Sandia National Laboratory to provide biosafety and biosecurity training to international counterparts through a “twinning program” designed to improve global biological threat response capabilities. During the 2018 twinning program, Mr. Ochoa was paired with Cairo University’s Kasr El Ainy Hospital in Egypt and designed a program to develop and implement a biorisk training program for the safe handling of dangerous pathogens at the hospital’s laboratory facilities.

PandemicTech was pleased to support Mr. Ochoa in implementing this program. Mr. Ochoa traveled to Kasr El Ainy hospital in November 2018 and conducted a highly successful training program for his Egyptian counterparts; his expertise was ultimately in high demand, as he also provided a lecture on biosafety and biosecurity to Cairo University’s veterinary medicine faculty during his Egyptian travel. This project has served as the foundation for a broader training partnership between Mexican and Egyptian colleagues in biosafety and biosecurity and is illustrative of the power of inter-regional partnerships in the fight against infectious disease threats.