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Will the biosecurity interventions succeed in a resource-limited setting like Nigeria in the event of an engineered pandemic?
5 min readJun 12
Many biosecurity interventions assume that if we create effective defences to manmade pandemics, society will be able to employ them when necessary. However, this assumption is mostly predicated on factors prevalent in high-income countries, including strong institutions, public trust, dependable healthcare systems, robust surveillance networks, and appropriate finance. In this paper, I suggested that military models designed and assumed to function in Western countries may not be applicable everywhere, particularly in resource-constrained environments. The environment in which the intervention will be deployed is equally important and should be considered during development. I suggest that every intervention pass the Biosecurity Environmental Fit (BEF) test to establish the degree of compatibility between a biosecurity intervention and the institutional, infrastructural, economic, and sociocultural context in which it is deployed.
It is no longer news that as AI system capabilities grow, the risk of misalignment increases. According to Andrew Snyder-Beattie's article, manufactured diseases will provide more than 99% of existential dangers to humans, whereas natural sources may pose fewer than 1%. According to the paper, the space for possible human attacks is endless, yet the possible portals of entrance into people are finite, highlighting the need for more research to produce low-cost interventions that may be deployed more widely to construct powerful defences. I agree with this principle. However, reading the article from Nigeria with an understanding of the socio-cultural dimensions raises a question that I rarely see discussed in biosecurity circles: Why do we think that defence models created and anticipated to succeed in Western countries will be applicable everywhere?
In management theory, Michael Porter's Diamond Model explains why some countries become extremely competitive in specific industries. His primary notion is that success does not result solely from a strategic approach. It results from the interaction of a strategy and the context in which it is implemented. A model that works in one country may not function in another due to differences in the underlying conditions. I believe biosecurity may face a similar difficulty. Many proposed remedies against manufactured pandemics presume the existence of circumstances common to high-income countries:
High levels of trust in public institutions.
Effective disease surveillance systems.
Access to healthcare is nearly universal.
Reliable diagnostics infrastructure.
Effective risk communication.
High adherence to public health guidelines.
Regulatory agencies that have adequate resources.
Complete digital and lab reporting systems.
Funding for implementing policies and interventions
These assumptions are often hidden because they are inherent in the milieu in which many biosecurity researchers live and work. Nigeria has a varied operating environment.
An engineered epidemic will not only affect Nigeria's formal health system. It would deal with Nigeria's transportation networks, marketplaces, religious institutions, informal healthcare providers, social conventions, government systems, and economic realities. Healthcare is divided among public, private, informal, and traditional providers.
In Nigeria, disease surveillance coverage is patchy. Approximately 80% of Nigeria's healthcare facilities are located in cities, leaving rural communities with very limited and uneven access. While many rural regions may have a Primary Health Care (PHC) centre, only around 20% of these facilities are considered functional, equipped, and staffed to offer acceptable care. As a result, any solution should consider how to accommodate these rural residents. Cross-border mobility is extensive.
Much biosecurity thought is based on a plausible assumption: if we create the correct interventions, society will be able to use them when a catastrophic biological catastrophe occurs. What if the difficulty is the context in which the intervention is supposed to be effective?
Diagnostic capability, genomic sequencing, disease surveillance, laboratory networks, emergency response systems, logistics, and healthcare infrastructure are among the skills, infrastructure, institutions, and resources required for success in biosecurity. Nigeria, however, is home to top-notch scientists and public health experts. However, expertise is insufficient on its own. There are some questions that must be addressed:
Would an engineered pandemic be detected rapidly and early?
Would genomic surveillance track transmission in real time? Considering the fact that most of the part of the city lacks centralised wastewater system for metagenomic sequencing.
Would diagnostics reach remote communities fast enough?
Would medical countermeasures be distributed at scale?
Do we need to build a private system independent of the government to distribute these interventions to shield them from politics?
Quietly, many biosecurity models presume that these capabilities already exist.
Trust can decline when scientific advice conflicts with cultural, political, or economic interests. Interventions developed in a pandemic response depend on something fragile: trust.
COVID-19 showed that even wealthier countries battled with these issues. Nigeria faces an additional challenge: public trust is unequal and varies greatly among areas, communities, and institutions. An intervention that works on paper can fail if the population does not believe the messenger.
No industry succeeds solely. The importance of helping countries prepare for a pandemic cannot be overstated. The development of allied services is critical, such as a robust pharmaceutical production system , cold-chain logistics, diagnostics companies, data systems, transportation networks, telecommunications infrastructure, and research institutes. During a pandemic, reaction capacity is dependent on all of these sectors operating concurrently. However, many biosecurity talks focus on the virus rather than the ecosystem required to adapt to it.
A sequencing laboratory is valuable. A sequencing facility linked to dependable logistics, timely reporting systems, diagnostic networks, and public health agencies is transformational.
Reading Andrew Snyder-Beattie's work on catastrophic biological risk made me question if biosecurity has a hidden assumption. The assumption does not involve pathogens. It's about countries. Many proposed defences presume a state with robust infrastructure, high institutional trust, integrated supporting systems, and the ability to organize a quick reaction. Nigeria is not unusual in this respect. Much of the Global South experiences comparable constraints. The question isn't whether biosecurity initiatives work.
The question is, where do they work? An created epidemic would not face an abstract defence system. It would come across the reality of roads, clinics, markets, governance, trust, electricity, telecommunications, informal healthcare networks, and human behaviour. These realities vary greatly from one country to another. And unless biosecurity begins to account for these disparities, we risk designing defence models that are optimum for Boston, London, and Geneva while ignoring Lagos, Kano, Kinshasa, and Dhaka. The next synthetic epidemic won't care where our models were created. It will only determine whether they are effective where they are most needed.
Therefore, I propose that interventions be developed to pass the biosecurity environmental fitness test. In this situation, the intervention is assessed to determine its compatibility with the institutional, infrastructural, economic, and sociocultural environment in which it is implemented.
Take wastewater metagenomics as an example. While this technique works effectively in resource-rich countries due to the centralized wastewater infrastructure, it fails in countries such as Nigeria due to the lack of centralization. We require more deployment realism in biosecurity planning. As a result, the next generation of pandemic defence must incorporate contextual biosecurity.
I therefore propose this hypothesis that the expected impact of a biosecurity intervention is a function not only of its technical efficacy but also of its environmental fit.
A perfect intervention with poor environmental fit may produce less benefit than a less sophisticated intervention with strong environmental fit.
