Message from the Director-General

Message from the Director-General, NIID

April 1, 2025

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) had been a Research Institute directly under the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) since its establishment as the National Institute of Health in 1947. In April, 2025, NIID was merged with the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) to form a new Institute, Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), whose vision is to be a World-leading Integrated Infectious Disease Science Center. JIHS is supposed to contribute to infectious disease crisis management and has four main functions; (i) Information collection, analysis and risk assessment (Disease Intelligence), (ii) Research, Development and Innovation (R&D), (iii) Comprehensive Medical Care, and (iv) Human Resource Development and International Cooperation.

NIID is expected to play a central role in Disease Intelligence and R&D functions for the control of infectious diseases in JIHS. Involvement of NIID in Human Resource Development and International Cooperation function is also important. To accomplish these functions, we will keep on and expand our NIID tasks to be further advanced. Indeed, NIID will play a key role in public health research by collecting, analyzing, and evaluating information, basic research on infectious diseases by pathogen isolation, characterization of pathogen structure and function, and immunological and pathological analysis of infectious diseases, translational research for the development of diagnostic techniques, vaccines, and therapeutic drugs, and research for quality management, biosafety, and so on.

I would like to prioritize three keywords, "reliable", "diversified", and "advanced" for the progress of NIID. First, NIID strives to collect and disseminate reliable data and information and make reliable communication with world-wide organizations, to be a trustable Research Institute, whose message could be trusted by all even under emergent infectious disease crisis. Second, to prepare for unknown infectious disease crisis, NIID promotes research from a broad perspective that will enable us to respond to outbreaks of a wide variety of pathogens. It is important to secure and develop human resources in a variety of fields for basic, translational, public, and management researches. Third, a highly flexible research system must be established to promote highly advanced research. Considering the impact of social trends on epidemics, we are going to build an advanced Microbiology and/or Infectious Disease Science that integrates Sociology, including Economics and Behavioristics. By pushing forward with prioritizing these three keywords, NIID/JIHS aims to be a state-of-the-art Institute for advanced infectious disease research, which is attractive for the next generation of researchers.

Tetsuro Matano, MD, PhD
Director-General
National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID)
Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS)