Direcção-Geral da Saúde, Lisboa, Portugal

Contact person

Prof. Doctor José Luis Castanheira
Director of the Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics
Direcção-Geral de Saúde
Alam. D. Afonso Henriques, 45
PT-1049 005 Lisboa
Portugal
Tel +351 218 430 781
Fax +351 218 430 687

Description of institute

The Directorate-General of Health is the central Public Health Agency aiming to coordinate and to supervision all the Portuguese public health units, namely concerning the control of communicable diseases. The Director-General of Health is the Portuguese Chief Medical Officer.

Training opportunities

The Portuguese National Health Service and its well organized public health structures provide enormous opportunities for training.

The EPIET trainee will be mainly at Directorate-General of Health in Lisbon, based on the Division of Epidemiology - Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics cooperating with the Division of Prevention and Disease Control - Department of Health Care:
  • Coordination of surveillance activities for notifiable diseases;
  • Collating national reports on notifiable diseases in Portugal;
  • Collaboration in designing and implementing a study protocol
According to a specific training program tailored to personal needs in order to achieve all the EPIET goals, trainees will frequent collaborative training sites:

Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge (National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge):
  • Planning, implementation and/or improvement of laboratory-based surveillance;
  • Interpretation of the diagnosis and epidemiological significance of reports from laboratory tests, including molecular tests ;
  • Introduction to national activities of HIV and AIDS surveillance;
  • Evaluation of laboratory-based surveillance.
Community Health Centres - Units of Public Health
  • Introduction to national and European activities of European Surveillance on Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC) and collaboration;
  • Outbreak investigation;
  • Using routine data to calculate vaccine coverage;
  • Public Health Strategies to increase vaccine coverage;
  • Survey to investigate the lack of parental compliance regarding childhood immunizations.
Hospitals of the NHS - Departments of Communicable Diseases
  • Introduction in hospital infection control activities.

Training supervision

Supported by a team of epidemiological facilitators, all of them senior staff, the trainee will be fully integrated in the Unit and will have access to all information available in the Department.
    Facilitators:
  • Dr. Carlos Orta Gomes (Programme manager)
    Head of the Unit for Epidemiology
    Direcção-Geral de Saúde, Lisboa
  • Dra. Cristina Furtado
    Infectious Diseases Department
    Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge, Lisboa
  • Dr. Eugénio Cordeiro
    Department of Public Health and Planning
    Administração Regional de Saúde, IP, Coimbra
  • Dra. Teresa Fernandes
    Unit for Prevention and Disease Control
    Direcção-Geral de Saúde, Lisboa
  • Dra. Marion Muehlen (EPIET Scientific Coordinator)
    Robert Koch Institute, Berlin

Language requirements

Good knowledge of Portuguese is essential.

Training history

Number of EPIET alumni working at institute: None New site!
Available as training site for cohort 14: Yes
    
This website -www.epiet.org- is hosted and updated by ECDC, Sweden.