Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge - EUPHEM

Contact person

Rita De Sousa, PhD (EUPHEM supervisor)

Tel.: (+351) 217508179

Description of institute

The Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) is a public organization of the Ministry of Health, endowed with scientific, technical, administrative, financial autonomy and property of its own. Founded in 1899 by Ricardo Jorge as laboratory of the Portuguese Health System, INSA is the State Laboratory in the Health Sector, National Reference Laboratory and National Health Observatory.

The mission of the INSA is to contribute to Public Health gains through research and technological development, activities of microbiology reference laboratories, health observation and epidemiological surveillance. INSA coordinates the external evaluation of laboratory quality, disseminates scientific culture, fosters capacity building and training and also ensures the provision of differentiated services in these areas. INSA is a member of National and International organizations (ECDC, WHO, EFSA, for instance) and also participates in international cooperation projects for development, particularly with Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) framed by the general guidelines of the Portuguese foreign policy cooperation.

The fellows are hosted in the Infectious Diseases Department (DDI), which includes the National Reference Laboratories (NRL), that are closely integrate within surveillance activities to facilitate and generate quality information for support evidence based advice when is needed. DDI includes also other units such as Bio-preparedness and Emergency Response and the Management and Technical Support Unit (Bioinformatics) essential to support Public Health events and research. INSA also has specialized laboratories (BSL-3) allowing work with highly pathogenic agents. INSA has a clear Public Health Microbiology profile integrating different topics of bacteriology, virology, parasitology including a wide range of pathogens.

The main Public Health Programmes integrated with the NRL are:

• Antimicrobial Resistance
• Gastrointestinal and foodborne infections
• Respiratory Infections
• Parasitic and Fungal Infections
• Sexually Transmitted Infections
• Vaccine preventable diseases
• Vector-borne Diseases

The main public health core-functions from Infectious Disease Department and Epidemiology Department are:

• Public health microbiology research
• Microbiological Surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases
• Surveillance of microbiological infections
• Teaching and Training in Public Health microbiology and epidemiology

Training opportunities

The EUPHEM activity will be performed under the Technical-Scientific Departments and mainly in the Infectious Diseases Department. According to a specific training program tailored to personal needs in order to achieve all the EUPHEM goals, fellows will develop activities in collaboration with other INSA Departments such as Epidemiology Department (INSA) and other collaborative training sites such as General Directorate of Health (DGS) in activities such as: analysis of surveillance data, surveillance activities of notifiable communicable diseases and outbreak investigation. 

Training supervision

The EUPHEM fellow will be supervised by the main EUPHEM supervisor microbiologists and co-supervisor in all the tasks and assignments. Additionally, fellow will be also supervised by scientist/consultant for each particular project. Fellows will have also support from Epidemiology Department and from other facilitators from the training site.

Language requirements

English is widely spoken and understood by almost everyone at INSA. It is valued if the fellow speaks and writes Portuguese but is not a requirement. Attending Portuguese courses is strongly recommended.

Training history

It will be the 4th year as EUPHEM site. We have trained three EU-track and two MS-track fellows.