The “VIASEF – In Vivo Arthropod Security Facility” – Security infrastructure for arthropod disease vectors, was formally inaugurated on the 21th of June 2021, at 2:30 pm, by the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Prof. Dr. Manuel Heitor, by the Rector of Universidade Nova Prof. Dr. João Sàágua and the Director of the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IHMT-NOVA), Prof. Dr. Filomeno Fortes. The ceremony was attended by the Angolan Minister of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Maria do Rosário Bragança, remotely in Angola.
VIASEF is a high-security infrastructure ACL3 (Class III Containment Laboratory for Arthropods) that offers the academic, scientific and business communities the possibility of carrying out in vivo studies with arthropod vectors of disease-causing agents.
This laboratory facility also complies with the norms of the 3rd level of microbiological containment, having safe conditions to develop projects with pathogens, from biological risk 1 to risk 3, such as multiresistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains or viruses such as Chikungunya, Dengue, Zika, Coronaviridae.