Invited by the Director of Institutional Biocontainment Resources, Professor Miguel A. Grimaldo, the Coordinator of the General Research Services (SGIker), Iñaki Echeverria, has attended a training course on biosafety and biocontainment taught in building facilities Keiller Galveston National Lab at the University of Texas Branch (United States), from 6 to 10 June 2016.

Construction and maintenance of laboratory biosafety levels 3 and 4, together with decontamination of waste, have been some of the issues that have been addressed in this theoretical and practical course, and has taken place in a international reference center for research with level 4 pathogens such as Ebola and which has recently remodeled a laboratory to investigate Zika virus.

The international course, , was also attended by members of the Brazilian government and responsibles of biosafety reference centers in Spain, as Gonzalo Pascual (National Research Institute and Agricultural and Food Technology, INIA) and David Solanes (Research Center for Animal Health).

The meeting of experts on the subject in the American center has also been a first approach to consensus criteria in areas of biosafety and biocontainment between Europe and the United States. Aspects that will be undoubtedly deepen and will be studied at the next congress for biosafety organized by the Spanish Association for Biosafety (AEBIOS) and  SGIker and, will be held on October 17th-18th in Bilbao.