Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Alexander Subbotin has been appointed to the Council for Biological Security under the Council of Ministers.

A Council for Biological Security has been established under the Council of Ministers. Its composition has been approved by Government Decree No. 634 of 28 September 2023, which has been officially published on the National Legal Internet Portal.

According to the document, the Council will be headed by Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko. The Deputy Prime Ministers Igor Petrishenko and Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Alexander Subbotin have been appointed as Deputy Chairmen of the Council. The Council also includes the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sergey Bartosz and the Minister of Health Dmitry Pinevich.

The Council also includes Andrei Goncharov, Director of the Institute of Biophysics and Cell Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Vladimir Gorbunov, Director of the Republican Scientific and Practical Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Alexander Neverovsky, Deputy State Secretary of the Security Council, and others.

The Council for Biological Security under the Council of Ministers is defined as a standing body in the field of ensuring biological security, coordinating the work carried out in Belarus to prevent, detect, and mitigate biological risks associated with the negative impact of dangerous biological factors on human health, animals, plants, products of animal and plant origin, and (or) the environment.

In the updated Concept of National Security, the issue of biological security is highlighted as a separate section. As Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko noted on September 13 during a meeting at the government, the relevance of this issue is increasing every year. Moreover, in the last decade, there has been an intensive spread of a number of dangerous infectious diseases among humans and animals. "These include outbreaks of severe respiratory diseases, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the panzootic of African swine fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and others. We see that outbreaks of diseases that were thought to be long-conquered in humans and animals are now occurring, and the problem of the spread of microorganisms resistant to antibiotic treatment is growing," the head of the Belarusian government explained at the time.

Furthermore, according to him, the activities of certain states in conducting experiments with microorganisms and biological laboratories of unclear purpose raise significant concerns. "Moreover, we observe the activity of a number of countries, including those bordering us, in researching the human, animal, and plant genomes, and working with pathogenic microorganisms. And this is not always driven by a constructive scientific interest," the Prime Minister outlined the issues.

"BELTA"

Source: vitebsk-region.gov.by