Government policies and interventions for development in Health sectors
Challenges to National Security
International Organisation and their mandates
COVID-19: Countries should commit for Universal Bio-deterrence
Context: COVID-19 pandemic has awakened the world to the destructive potential of a possible biological weapon. Many see COVID-19 as a quasi-biological war in its scale, scope, duration and impact.
Health and biosecurity have, thus, become paramount in national security in 2020.
Challenges of Biological Weapons
Difficult to differentiate between intentional harm and accidental transmission.
New biological agents cannot be anticipated
Highly transmissible and deadly
The time lag in finding treatment and vaccines inflicts high morbidity and mortality on defenceless populations.
The latency period and mutation into different strains makes disease detection and control difficult.
It affects the armed forces’ capacity to deal with other conventional and terrorist threats
Amenable to be used by non-state actors: Bioterrorism by non-state actors through accidental release or theft of biological disease agents from research facilities
Mass contagion and fatalities can bring even the most powerful economies to a halt.
Societies can be put into turmoil and governance can suffer serious crises.
What measures are need to tackle dangers of Bio-weapons?
Integration with National Security
Biosecurity should be mainstreamed into our defence, security and counterterrorism strategies.
A dedicated National Rapid Deployment Biosecurity Force should be established
This would consist of armed forces, police and health responders who perform frontline pandemic-related bio-defence, and disaster relief and response roles.
Developing Bio-intelligence
Effective, credible, national and international, bio-intelligence systems — especially for new diseases and potential bioweapons — should be put in place.
National defence intelligence should incorporate medical intelligence and infectious diseases-risk assessment, and pandemic predictions.
Countries should develop National strategies for bio-intelligence and cooperate with other friendly biosecurity powers
Bio-safety of Research facilities
Governmental and private R&D labs, biotech and virology centres need to be catalogued according to established safety levels, especially for dangerous biological toxins.
Protocols in case of accidents and theft need to be established for them.
Empowering WHO’s health security mechanisms to surveil and access facilities in countries free from geopolitical pressures.
Non-proliferation and export control on dual-use biological materials and technologies.
All countries need to recommit to a doctrine of universal bio-deterrence.
Changes in Governance
Countries need to make all normal laboratories and medical facilities transformable into a seamless biosecurity infrastructure for quick and reliable testing
Countries should pursue national self-sufficiency in medical and healthcare supply chains
Conclusion
India needs to propel the early reinforcement of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention with a comprehensive, legally-binding protocol on credible biosurveillance, verification and compliance mechanism at the 2021 review conference.
Connecting the dots:
Chemical Weapons
Trade control regimes: Wassenaar agreement, Australia Group, MTCR and NSG
