Sacha Wallace-Sankarsingh

Ms Sacha Wallace-Sankarsingh, MSc, MPH (International Public Health), is an independent health security laboratory consultant working with public and civil-society organizations to address issues of biosafety and biosecurity in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Regions. A national of Guyana, Ms Wallace-Sankarsingh has over 18 years of experience with medical and public health laboratories at national and regional levels in the Caribbean. Sacha has direct experience managing the biosafety and biosecurity programme in the Biosafety Level 2 and 3 laboratories at the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) where she initiated and coordinated the regional network of National Focal Points and advocated with multi-sectoral stakeholders for national policies to strengthen laboratory quality. 

Ms Wallace-Sankarsingh focuses much of her work on small island developing states and has led multiple capacity building initiatives in biosafety, risk assessment and sample transportation, reaching more than 2000 laboratory professionals in collaboration with WHO. She served as the 2020–2021 Chair of the Global Health Security Agenda’s Action Package Prevent 3 (APP3) on Biosafety and Biosecurity and is a Working Group Member for various initiatives including the Global Partnership’s Signature Initiative with the Africa CDC, NTI-Bio’s Global Biosecurity Dialogue, and Chatham House’s Sustainable Laboratories Initiative. Ms Wallace-Sankarsingh continues to advocate for sustainable biosafety and biosecurity systems as the International Federation of Biosafety Associations (IFBA) LAC Regional Program Coordinator and as a founding member of the Caribbean Society for Biosafety and Biosecurity (CSBB).