Participants at a Training for Russian-speaking First Responders to Incidents of Chemical Contamination held in Belarus.
The Government of Belarus and the OPCW jointly organised the second international training for Russian-speaking first responders to incidents involving chemical weapons or toxic industrial chemicals. With support of the Ministry for Emergency of Belarus, 21 experts from 11 States Parties* completed this training from 1 to 9 June 2015.
The course was held at the Institute for Retraining and Professional Development in Svetlaya Roshcha.
The course dealt with issues related to assistance and protection against chemical weapons under Article X of the Chemical Weapons Convention and offered advanced training in the use of protective equipment, and in monitoring, detection, and decontamination techniques which are used in response to attacks with chemical warfare agents. Participants also acquired knowledge of chemical emergency response through table-top and field exercises. The selected participants were from national emergency response agencies tasked to prevent and mitigate chemical incidents.
* Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cuba, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Vietnam.