News

On 23 June 2020 the CABICHEM Consortium led by the Team Leader, Yaugen Ryzhykau, met remotely the CoE65 Uzbek Delegation including the National Focal Point for Uzbekistan, Dr. Otabek Kasimov, and the Head of the State Committee on Industrial Safety, Head of the RS fo CA, Dr. Bakhtiyor Gulyamov. The meeting had the aim of discussing about the state of the art of the project activities - with a special focus on the current status of each WP implementation - as well as presenting to the Delegation the CABICHEM e-learning platform recently launched online by Fondazione FORMIT (https://coe65-learning.eu/). 

From 10 to 12 February 2020 a working group of thirty-three professionals and experts from key national agencies of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan met in Islamabad at the National Institute of Health the Working Package 4 delegation of experts of the European Union’s Centers of Excellence for the prevention, protection and mitigation against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risks and threats. The scientific and technical discussion focused on a series of emerging threats related to the management of hazardous chemical and biological waste. In particular, some exemplar case studies dealing with the handling, reduction, recycling and reuse of hazardous waste materials (urban mining, animal carcasses, formaldehyde-containing solution disposal, asbestos waste materials, etc.) were treated and discussed in a multidisciplinary way, thanks to the multi-faceted background of the participants.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel-Coronavirus-2019, grew rapidly in the last months, thus becoming a severe pandemics concerning virtually all countries in the 5 continents and negatively affecting the everyday’s life of any citizen in the world.

For these reasons, although counteracting a new emerging pandemics was not an original main goal of CABICHEM CBRN Project no. 65, the Leader of Work Package 4, whose institutional tasks are awareness raising and training activities linked to the management of hazardous chemical and/or biological waste materials, decided to share with CABICHEM’s Partners and participants a set of extra information packages focusing on the use of sanitation solutions to mitigate the diffusion of the novel-Coronavirus on surfaces, on the use of the most adequate Personal Protective Equipment to operate in COVID-19-contaminated areas as well as on the management and treatment of bio-hazardous waste, paying a specific attention to the biosafety aspects linked to this poorly-known pathogenic agent.

On 9th January 2020 a 9-people group of Projects Partners’ representatives – with the addition of two, who attended remotely – met in Bruxelles the Project Officer at the European Commission DG DEVCO headquarters. The delegation updated DG DEVCO regarding the state-of-the-art of the project and next steps that will be done.

Moreover, it was a good chance for the team to discuss related issues and coordinate each other. In particular, Project Partners exposed the detail of the Work Packages they are in charge of, as well as of the main results achieved and their points of strength and weakness.