MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/. Russia has the expertise to help CIS countries in designing and equipping high-biosafety laboratories, the head of Russia’s sanitary watchdog, Anna Popova, said on Tuesday.

"Based on our own experience, we are ready to assist in the design, construction, equipment and training of personnel of research centers with high-level biological safety laboratories and the development of research programs," she said at an informal meeting of the leaders of the CIS member states. "We know and are able to create such facilities, including taking into account the need to ensure all conditions for biological safety and the technological independence of their functioning."

Popova said that Russia, acting on the president’s orders, conceived an initiative called the sanitary shield that’s aimed at strengthening and modernizing the entire system of sanitary and epidemiological surveillance, including laboratory infrastructure. It stipulates the development of international cooperation with the aim of creating a single "sanitary shield" in the CIS space.

"In fact, this work is already underway in the areas of joint research, training, equipping laboratories," Popova said. A joint sanitary shield should be based on a powerful independent infrastructure including laboratories, research centers, sanitary and quarantine checkpoints operating in a single system of coordinates, she said.