Welcome in the new IZS of Sicily Website! I would like to thank all the staff who have worked with dedication and enthusiasm over the years and have helped to make the Institute what it is today.  Thanks also goes to the management and administration the Institute has had the honour to work with throughout its life.

It is my pleasure and honour to direct this Institute, and the publication of this web site I consider to be reason for both great satisfaction and pride as a Sicilian citizen, and a duty to society.

Sicilians have the right to know that the protection of public health and the animal population is safe in the hands of the Institute.

Its laboratories have been working towards guaranteeing public health for years and are in constant evolution, thanks to research and technical scientific exchanges with other regional, national and international bodies.

The first mention goes to the founding director of the Institute, Professor Adelmo Mirri.  Mirri was a great scientist and it is thanks to his work that our livestock has improved greatly; Mirri introduced the carbuncular vaccine and the “brucellina Mirri”.  It is also thanks to his smallpox vaccine, develped in the 1940s, that many human lives were saved.
75 years have gone by, but the Institute still boasts its original architecture, wtih a small amount of restoration done to its outisde and modernistion to the inside.

The Director’s office,  the Auditorium and the library have been restored.  We have added a new pavilion for exotic diseases and there is shortly to be another one to allow for an increase in laboratory work.  The Institute has had to adapt to recent scientific research demands and responsibilities newly required.

The peripherical sections have been turned into territorial departments and are under the responsibility of veterinary surgeons and large structure managers.  There are also two territorial departments in the process of becoming institutes – Agrigento and Trapani, thanks to help from the local provincial public administration.
Many of the collaborators are newly graduated and have won a scholarship to the Institute, or are special short-term contract holders.  They are eager to learn from the experience of their older colleagues and bring youth and enthusiasm to their work.
The Sicilian IZS has had to remodel its public rights health structure in response to EC financial and political guide-lines concerning businesses, including health structures.  It is a modern structure which considers scientific research and the prevention and protection of public health to be of primary importance.

All those responsibilities entrusted to the Institute by the Ministry and the Region are carried out by IZS Sicily using methods in constant evolution.  In the future, the Institute will have a whole new range of responsibilities : food safety checks, scientific research , training for health personnel and health awareness for all citizens, international scientific collaboration and working together with 3rd world countries.

The Institute is still full of life and energy; experience coupled with vigour and strength, and eager to look to the future.


 

Dr Andrea Antonio Riela
Director General