Robert Koch Institute

Last updated

Robert Koch Institute
Robert Koch Institut
Founded1 July 1891;132 years ago (1 July 1891)
Type Research institute
Location
Area served
Germany
Owner German Federal Ministry of Health
Key people
 Lars Schaade (President)
Johanna Hanefeld and Anke Engelbert (Acting Vice Presidents)
Website www.rki.de/EN

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is a German federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention. It is located in Berlin and Wernigerode. As an upper federal agency, it is subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Health. It was founded in 1891 and is named for its founding director, the founder of modern bacteriology and Nobel laureate Robert Koch.

Contents

Tasks

The Robert Koch Institute monitors public health. Its core tasks include the detection, prevention and combatting of infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases in Germany. The institute advises the specialist public and government, e.g. on preventing and tackling infectious disease outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and the EHEC O104:H4 outbreak in 2011. The institute is also in charge of health monitoring and health reporting in Germany, covering non-communicable diseases: in large monitoring studies, RKI monitors the health status of adults and children in Germany. [1]

RKI scientists regularly publish their results in scientific journals and in their own reports, e.g. the "Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report", special reports on different diseases in Germany (influenza, tuberculosis, cancer), "Health in Germany". Apart from that, the Institute publishes several scientific periodicals, such as the monthly "Journal of Health Monitoring", "Epidemiological Bulletin" and the "Bundesgesundheitsblatt" (co-publisher). The institute is also home to various National Reference Centres and Consultant Laboratories. Around 15 scientific committees, such as the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) and the Commission for Hospital Hygiene and Infection Prevention (KRINKO), are also based at the Robert Koch Institute. [2]

RKI staff are involved in various international research projects and programmes, helping to tackle urgent public health problems such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2011. [3] RKI also cooperates closely with international partners like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The institute hosts two WHO reference laboratories (polio and measles/rubella) and has been the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emerging Infections and Biological Threats since 2016. [4] RKI is the only federal institute in Germany in the field of human medicine with a BSL-4 laboratory (which was opened in 2015 and has become fully operational in summer 2018). [5]

Location and organisation

The Robert Koch Institute has its headquarters and two additional sites in Berlin (Nordufer, Seestraße, General-Pape-Straße) as well as a site in Wernigerode/Harz region.[ citation needed ]

RKI's focus is on research, some 450 of about 1,100 members of staff are scientists. The institute consists of the following units. [6]

A museum presenting the life and work of Robert Koch as well as of the institute today is located at the main building at Nordufer site and open to visitors from Monday to Friday. The mausoleum with Robert Koch's remains can also be visited. [7]

History

The institute's founding director and namesake, Nobel laureate Robert Koch RobertKoch cropped.jpg
The institute's founding director and namesake, Nobel laureate Robert Koch

The institute was formed by the later Nobel Prize laureate Robert Koch in 1891 as the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases. [8] Koch lived until the age of 66, when he died of a heart attack in Baden-Baden, on 27 May 1910; his ashes were buried in a mausoleum in his institute on 10 December 1910. [9] The director from 1917 to 1933 was Fred Neufeld who discovered the pneumococcal types. [10] Neufeld's Deputy Director from 1919 to 1933 was Walter Levinthal.[ citation needed ]

During the Third Reich, the Institute took part in atrocities committed in the name of national socialism, such as experiments into typhus vaccines at Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1941, resulting in the deaths of 127 of the 537 inmates involved. [11] The institute was renamed the Robert Koch Institute in 1942. Following the collapse of the Nazi regime, only few scientists ever had to face legal consequences, and their crimes were largely ignored for the remainder of the century. [12]

In 1952 the Institute became a subordinate agency of the Federal Health Agency. Following the German reunification in 1990, some former GDR health agencies were (partly) integrated in the Robert Koch Institute. One of them was the Institute for Experimental Epidemiology in Wernigerode/Harz region, which is still an RKI location today. In 1994, the Federal Health Agency was dissolved, and RKI became an independent federal agency within the portfolio of the German Federal Ministry of Health. Two of the former Federal Health Agency's institutes, the Berlin-based AIDS centre and the "Institut für Sozialmedizin und Epidemiologie" (Institute for Social Medicine and Epidemiology), were attached to the Robert Koch Institute. The RKI – which until then was occupied with infectious diseases alone – now had a second big topic: non-communicable diseases and their risk factors. [13]

In 2020, the institute was responsible for publishing contact tracing smartphone apps as part of the German government's response to COVID-19. [14] [15]

Presidents

Since its inception in 1891, the RKI has had 15 individual presidents. [16]

Notable people

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control</span> Agency of the European Union

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is an agency of the European Union (EU) whose mission is to strengthen Europe's defences against infectious diseases. It covers a wide spectrum of activities, such as: surveillance, epidemic intelligence, response, scientific advice, microbiology, preparedness, public health training, international relations, health communication, and the scientific journal Eurosurveillance. The centre was established in 2004 and is headquartered in Solna, Sweden.

A notifiable disease is any disease that is required by law to be reported to government authorities. The collation of information allows the authorities to monitor the disease, and provides early warning of possible outbreaks. In the case of livestock diseases, there may also be the legal requirement to kill the infected livestock upon notification. Many governments have enacted regulations for reporting of both human and animal diseases.

David L. Heymann is an American infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert, based in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Statens Serum Institut</span> Medical research institute in Denmark

Statens Serum Institut, is a Danish sector research institute located on the island of Amager in Copenhagen. Its purpose is to combat and prevent infectious diseases, congenital disorders, and threats from weapons of mass destruction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices</span> German regulatory agency

The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices is the medical regulatory body in Germany. It operates under the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG). It is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. Its president is Karl Broich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Centre for Disease Control</span> Indian medical health government agency

The National Centre for Disease Control is an institute under the Indian Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It was established in July 1963 for research in epidemiology and control of communicable diseases and to reorganize the activities of the Malaria Institute of India. It has nine branches at Alwar, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, Calicut, Coonoor, Jagdalpur, Patna, Rajahmundry and Varanasi to advise the respective state governments on public health. The headquarters are in Sham Nath Marg, in New Delhi.

The International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) is an international umbrella organization of national public health institutes (NPHIs), public health government agencies working to improve national disease prevention and response. IANPHI is made up of 100+ members, located in more than 90 countries. An important goal of IANPHI is to improve health outcomes by strengthening NPHIs or supporting countries in creating new NPHIs.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is the national public health institute for Nigeria. It is a federal government agency under the Federal Ministry of Health (Nigeria), with its headquarters in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory.

The Standing Committee on Vaccination at the Robert Koch Institute, or STIKO, is a scientific committee comprising 18 members at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany that provides official recommendations for the vaccination schedules used by the individual German states. The committee meets twice yearly to review the latest research regarding vaccination against infectious diseases. Although the STIKO makes recommendations, immunization in Germany is voluntary and there are no official government recommendations. German Federal States typically follow the STIKO's recommendations minimally, although each state can make recommendations for their geographic jurisdiction that extends beyond the recommended list. In addition to the proposed immunization schedule for children and adults, the STIKO recommends vaccinations for occupational groups, police, travelers, and other at risk groups.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is part of Ireland's Health Service Executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chikwe Ihekweazu</span> Nigerian epidemiologist

Chikwe Ihekweazu is a Nigerian epidemiologist, public health physician and the World Health Organization’s Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems.

Robert Steffen is an Emeritus Professor at the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Public in Houston. He is an editor of the Journal of Travel Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Lipsitch</span> American epidemiologist

Marc Lipsitch is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He has worked on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Ammon</span> German physician

Andrea Ammon is a German physician and the current director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), a European Union (EU) agency strengthening Europe's defence against infectious disease. She advised the German government on the SARS and Influenza A virus subtype H2N2 outbreaks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bärbel-Maria Kurth</span> German statistician and epidemiologist

Bärbel-Maria Kurth is a German statistician and epidemiologist. From 1998 to 2019, she headed the Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. In 1998, she initiated the first nationwide health survey. Subsequently, she and her department established a continuous health monitoring system for Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lothar H. Wieler</span> German veterinarian, microbiologist, and the current president of the Robert Koch Institute

Lothar Heinz Wieler is a German veterinarian and microbiologist who served as president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from 2015 to 2023. In this capacity, he advised the German Federal and State Governments on topics of public health, especially infection hazards, and on the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2022–2023 mpox outbreak in Germany is part of an ongoing global outbreak of human mpox caused by the West African clade of the monkeypox virus. At the beginning of September 2022, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are the countries with most cumulative cases in Europe.

Lars Schaade is a German physician. He is a specialist in microbiology and infectious disease epidemiology and has been president of the Robert Koch Institute since 2023. He has been an honorary professor at Charité since 2017.

The Federal Institute for Prevention and Education in Medicine or Bundesinstitut für Prävention und Aufklärung in der Medizin (BIPAM) in Germany is an independent federal public health authority being planned by the Federal Ministry of Health (Germany), spearheaded by health minister Karl Lauterbach, and expected to be implemented by January 2025. It is charged to focus on non-communicable diseases like cardiac disease, cancer and dementia, and will subsume health education tasks, so far handled by the Federal Centre for Health Education in Cologne.

References

  1. ↑ "Protecting Health – Assessing Risks. Who we are, what we look back on, what we do and will do" (PDF). rki.de/EN. 2016. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  2. ↑ "The Public Health Institute. 125 Years Robert Koch Institute" (PDF). rki.de/EN. 2016. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  3. ↑ "Reports from the field: RKI staff responds to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa". rki.de/EN. 2016. Archived from the original on 18 October 2020. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  4. ↑ "RKI's International Activities". rki.de/EN. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  5. ↑ "The BSL-4 laboratory at the Robert Koch Institute". rki.de/EN. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  6. ↑ "The Institute – Departments and Units". rki.de. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  7. ↑ "Museum and Mausoleum at RKI". rki.de/EN. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  8. ↑ "RKI – Timeline of the Robert Koch Institute". rki.de. 3 December 2018. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  9. ↑ "RKI – Robert Koch". rki.de. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  10. ↑ Fry, Michael (2016). Landmark Experiments in Molecular Biology. Academic Press. p. 46. ISBN   978-0-12-802074-6.
  11. ↑ Evans, Richard J. (2009). The Third Reich at War: 1939–1945 (reprint ed.). Penguin. ISBN   978-1-10102230-6.
  12. ↑ Hinz-Wessels, Annette. "Das Robert Koch-Institut im Nationalsozialismus" (PDF). rki.de (in German). pp. 15–17. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  13. ↑ Das besondere Stück: Eine Institutsgeschichte in Bildern. Berlin: Robert Koch Institute. 2017. pp. 107–. ISBN   978-3-89606-284-0.
  14. ↑ "LATEST: Germany launches app in bid to monitor coronavirus spread". thelocal.de. 7 April 2020. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  15. ↑ Kelion, Leo (22 June 2020). "Ireland set to launch virus app despite UK delay". BBC News. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  16. ↑ "RKI – Geschichte – Die Präsidenten des Robert-Koch-Instituts". rki.es (in German). Retrieved 9 March 2020.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.