Interpol’s first bioterrorism workshop wraps up in South Africa

Interpol held the first of three regional bioterrorism workshops this week in Cape Town, South Africa. The workshop brought together more than ninety law enforcement, scientific and legal experts from 41 African countries for a three-day discussion of how to encourage greater recognition and response development to bioterrorism threats. Two more such events will take place in 2006 in Singapore and Chile.

Workshop participants looked at laboratory security, bioterrorism identification and assessment, inter-governmental cooperation in case of an event, and Interpol announced a ‘train the trainer’ project for National Central Bureaus in the organization’s 184 member countries. The organization launched its bioterrorism program in 2004 with almost $1 million in funding from the U.S.-based Sloan Foundation.

-read the report or visit Interpol’s bioterrorism information page