Meeting report: 15 th Annual Conference of the European BioSafety Association 2012

Almost 300 people participated in the latest annual conference of the European BioSafety Association (EBSA). This year’s EBSA conference, the 15th ofthe series, took place on June 12–13, 2012 in Manchester, UK. It was preceded by eight full-day courses with almost 200 participants in total. 

       The conference consisted of seven sessions with 16 lectures and started with the opening by the President of the society, Patrick Rüdelsheim (Perseus, Belgium), who presented the evolution of biosafety: starting from an intuitive approach followed by an evidence-based to the current performance-based approach. The welcome address by a representative of the host, the University of Manchester, Nalin Thakker, stressed the historical importance of the  location: first railway station, first telephone exchange and now the role of graphene. A video teleconference call by David Heymann on an armchair (literally) tour of the world of biosecurity addressed the historical approach to Ebola virus in Africa, the origin of HIV, certification of small pox eradication in 1980, SARS in 2003, and the consequences of Hepatitis C in Egypt on workers in Saudi Arabia. The conclusion was: laboratory and health workers are at great risk of infection.

This year's annual meeting of the European BioSafety Association, the 15^th of the series, took place on June 12–13, 2012 in Manchester, United Kingdom. Dr. Benedictus Verduin (BioRiskManagement, Wageningen, The Netherlands), President of EBSA 2007–2008, reports the proceedings of the meeting in this concise forum article. 

REFERENCIA:
Verduin BJM. Meeting report: 15th Annual Conference of the European BioSafety Association 2012. Biotechnology Journal 2012. 7(12):1427–1428. DOI: 10.1002/biot.201200302