The Institute of Public Health of Serbia (IPHS) "Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut" hosts the final conference of EU Twinning project "Strengthening the capacity of Serbia's health sector for communicable disease surveillance" on 13 June 2025.
The project was implemented through EU Twinning Instrument and carried out by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in partnership with the IPHS "Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut" and with support from the Serbian Ministry of Health.
Launched in April 2023, this two-year Twinning project aimed to strengthen Serbia’s institutional and legislative capacity in line with EU requirements and practices, enabling more robust participation in EU communicable disease surveillance networks. The project focused on three strategic pillars:
- Advancing procedures and standards for coordinating epidemiological surveillance, outbreak detection and response.
- Upgrading a computerized surveillance system for communicable disease surveillance.
- Enhancing professional competencies in surveillance, outbreak detection and epidemiological investigation.
Key deliverables of the project, which will be presented at the Final Conference, include, inter alia:
- Draft Rulebook for quality assessment (EQA) at microbiology clinical laboratories.
- Draft professional and methodological instructions on biosafety, biosecurity and transportation of samples for microbiology clinical laboratories in the Republic of Serbia.
- Proposal for the reorganization of the Serbian system of microbiology national reference laboratories (NRLs).
- Revised professional and methodological instructions for epidemiological surveillance of communicable diseases.
- Draft set of performance indicators for the electronic laboratory notification system
- 5 training modules for selected trainers from among public health epidemiologists and microbiologists, and a trainer manual
"Through this partnership, Serbia has taken meaningful steps to align its public health systems with EU standards and requirements, ensuring more effective communicable disease surveillance and outbreak detection and investigation,” said Professor Verica Jovanovic, Acting Director of the IPHS.
This collaborative effort between Serbia and Finland brought together a wide array of public health institutions and experts, who participated in project’s training activities and meetings.
The final conference of the Twinning project will also serve as a stage to present updates on related ongoing initiatives in communicable disease surveillance and public health. In addition, it will outline future development priorities and next steps.