Direction de la santé (DISA)
Contact person
Tel. +352 24 78 56 51
Description of the institute
The Health Directorate is an administration under the authority of the Minister of Health with approximately 330 members of staff as of end of 2021.
The Health Directorate is a key player in the health system. It defines public health objectives and contributes to the national health strategy. It acts as the technical advising body for the Ministry of Health. The Health Directorate develops and pilots national health plans and interacts with all partners in the health system. In its mission to protect health, the Health Directorate provides awareness, screening and surveillance services. It ensures access, quality and safety of health care. It ensures compliance with applicable laws, regulations and standards. The Law of November 21st, 1980 specifies the tasks of the Health Directorate and its internal organisation.
The analyses and actions of the Health Directorate are based on objective data that support the development of effective public health policies. The Health Directorate is also an actor in health policy at the international level, i.e. it represents Luxembourg in international bodies including the World Health Organisation and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Training site
Within the Health Directorate, the Health Inspection is responsible for ensuring the protection of public health in a global approach covering surveillance and control, as well as preparedness and response to all threats to human health. We focus on surveillance and control of communicable diseases along with surveillance, risk assessment and management in the environment. The Health Inspection is the national focal point for the International Health Regulation of WHO and focal point for various committees and diseases surveillance at ECDC.
Infectious diseases surveillance is based on a system of mandatory notifications of infectious diseases, which requires all practicing doctors, dentists and medical laboratories to notify cases of certain infections via an electronically secure transmission system. Whenever needed, we conduct outbreak investigation in collaboration with the national reference laboratory and other administrations. These include schools, national office for refugees, veterinary administration, and food security.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Inspection has been in charge of conducting contact tracing for the whole country including management of COVID-19 cases and contacts. The Health Inspection is responsible not only for risk assessment, but also implicated in risk management, for example by providing treatment and conducting screening in certain outbreak situations.
The Health Inspection is the national competent body transmitting national pseudonymised case data for most infectious pathogens to ECDC and interacts with public health institutes from other countries in case of outbreaks or risk assessments. Health Inspection staff regularly respond to media requests on national infectious disease issues.
We produce reports on respiratory diseases and are currently working on an annual report for notifiable diseases with a focus on specific outbreaks such as Monkeypox, Norovirus in a restaurant, tuberculosis in school settings, vaccine preventable diseases in migrant hosting centers.
The Health Inspection collaborates with many national partner institutes including
- Laboratoire national de Santé (LNS) for genomic sequencing or other typing of strains or some specific identification of a given pathogen.
- the new Food Administration (ALVA) for foodborne outbreaks
- Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) for environmental surveillance
- The Ministry of Education for environmental control and outbreak management in daycare establishments (tuberculosis, vaccine preventable diseases)
- The Ministry of Family for surveillance and management of outbreaks in nursing homes
- The Water administration for water surveillance and for example Legionella risk assessment and management
- The Veterinary administration for surveillance of zoonoses
- The National Refugees Office for surveillance of imported diseases and case management if needed (and outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases for example)
Training opportunities
The training site offers opportunities for training including in depth analysis of existing surveillance data, contact tracing data for COVID-19, outbreak investigations, research and scientific communications (both written and oral).
Ideally, we prefer to leverage data from different sources (e.g. genomic and epidemiological data) to help us understand transmission chains and the impact of interventions.
We also participate in wider European project e-Cure to set up surveillance of Severe Acute respiratory Infections (SARI) in pilot hospital sites providing exciting development.
We are also setting up new surveillance for mosquito (and vector borne diseases) and we plan to improve our data collection of some diseases of interest such as hepatitis C or bacterial invasive infections.
Training supervision
Project supervision will be provided by the Health Inspection epidemiologists, doctors and scientific experts. Some staff members are currently also enrolled in a PhD programme or in a Master's in Epidemiology and Public Health.
Language requirements
English. Working knowledge of French would be helpful.