Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI) is a government expert authority for control of  infectious diseases among citizens.

SMI is also a leading research institute and finances a large number of research projects  related to the institute's public health responsibilities.

When SMI was formed in 1993 the governmental aim was to expand the research capacity for the institute.

SMI finances 6 endowed chairs at the Karolinska Institutet:

• Clinical bacteriology
• Clinical immunology
• Clinical virology
• Epidemiology
• Clinical parasitology
• Vaccine research

SMI today

• Expert government agency for control of infectious diseases
• Responsible for epidemiological surveillance (including molecular epidemiology) of 58 infectious diseases which are notifiable according to Swedish law, e.g. salmonellosis, shigellosis, infectious diseases covered by the paediatric vaccination programme, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV

Scientific projects and  international involvement

• Scientists at SMI are involved in many basic scientific projects supported by grants from the Swedish research council, EU, NIH, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and others

• SMI is involved in a large number of international public health and research projects in the Baltic region, the former Soviet Union, Africa, China and Latin America
• Some emphasis on HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and STI's
• International projects are externally funded

The Unit for Tuberculosis and Mycobacteriology

• Swedish NRL
• SNRL - supporting 9 countries, mainly in Eastern European
• Drug Resistance group - 1st and 2nd line testing, rapid detection of DR, QA and research
• Molecular typing - epidemiological typing of clinical isolates of M tuberculosis
• International collaboration