Biosafety capacity building: Experiences and challenges of a distance learning approach

Biotechnology is revolutionizing industrial and agricultural practice as the number of commercial biotechnology products is increasing each year. Simultaneously, a number of regulatory approaches are put into place to allow technological advancement while preserving public health and the environment. Developing and/or emerging countries often face major barriers to access biotechnologies and biotechnology-derived products as they frequently lack the institutional capacities and professional competence in exercising regulatory oversight. In order to address this need, intensive biosafety capacity building is required. Different training approaches can be used to train individuals in biosafety ranging from long-term leading to an academically accredited postgraduate certificate or a First Level Masters degree, to short term courses. In this work, we illustrate the applicability of a different approach to biosafety capacity building based on a distance e-learning system, the UNIDO e-Biosafety program that has been annually organized at the Marche Polytechnic University (MPU) in Italy and Ghent University (UGent) in Belgium since 2006. Even though there are some challenges, we can conclude based on our experience that distance learning in combination with on-campus tuition is amendable for biosafety capacity building.