Robert Koch Institute For Infectious Diseases
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The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is a German federal government agency and
research institute A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural ...
responsible for disease control and prevention. It is located in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and
Wernigerode Wernigerode () is a town in the Harz (district), district of Harz, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Until 2007, it was the capital of the Wernigerode (district), district of Wernigerode. Its population was 32,181 in 2020. Wernigerode is located southwes ...
. 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 Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
.


Tasks

The Robert Koch Institute monitors
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the de ...
. Its core tasks include the detection, prevention and combatting of
infectious diseases infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...
and
non-communicable disease A non-communicable disease (NCD) is a disease that is not transmission (medicine), transmissible directly from one person to another. NCDs include Parkinson's disease, autoimmune diseases, strokes, heart diseases, cancers, Diabetes mellitus, diab ...
s 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 COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, 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. 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 "" (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. 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. RKI also cooperates closely with international partners like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
(WHO). The institute hosts two WHO reference laboratories (
polio Poliomyelitis ( ), commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe ...
and
measles Measles (probably from Middle Dutch or Middle High German ''masel(e)'', meaning "blemish, blood blister") is a highly contagious, Vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine-preventable infectious disease caused by Measles morbillivirus, measles v ...
/
rubella Rubella, also known as German measles or three-day measles, is an infection caused by the rubella virus. This disease is often mild, with half of people not realizing that they are infected. A rash may start around two weeks after exposure and ...
) and has been the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emerging Infections and Biological Threats since 2016. 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).


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. RKI's focus is on research, some 450 of about 1,100 members of staff are scientists. The institute consists of the following units. * Department for Infectious Diseases * Department for Epidemiology and Health Reporting * Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology * Centre for Biological Threats and Special Pathogens * Centre for International Health Protection * Methodology and Research Infrastructure * Project groups (Immune Defense Mechanisms; Acinetobacter baumanii; Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms; Epidemiological Modelling of Infectious Diseases; Virulence Factors in Salmonella and Campylobacter) * Junior research groups (Microbial Genomics; Metabolism of Microbial Pathogens) * Staff units (e.g. Global Health and Biosecurity; Genetic Engineering) * Central services (e.g. Human Resources) 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.


History

The institute was formed by the later Nobel Prize laureate
Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
in 1891 as the ''Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases''. 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. The director from 1917 to 1933 was Fred Neufeld who discovered the pneumococcal types. Neufeld's Deputy Director from 1919 to 1933 was Walter Levinthal. During the
Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
, the Institute took part in atrocities committed in the name of national socialism, such as experiments into
typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...
vaccines at
Buchenwald Concentration Camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...
in 1941, resulting in the deaths of 127 of the 537 inmates involved. 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. In 1952 the Institute became a subordinate agency of the Federal Health Agency. Following the
German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...
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 The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
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. In 2020, the institute was responsible for publishing contact tracing smartphone apps as part of the German government's response to
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...
.


Presidents

Since its inception in 1891, the RKI has had 15 individual presidents. *
Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
(1891–1904) * Georg Gaffky (1904–1913) *
Friedrich Loeffler Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler (; 24 June 18529 April 1915) was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald. Biography He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1874. He worked with Robert Koch from 1879 to 188 ...
(1913–1915) * Fred Neufeld (1915–1933) * (1933–1934) * Richard Otto (1934–1935) * (1935–1945) * (1945–1949) * (1949–1952) * Georg Henneberg (1952–1969) * Hansjürgen Raettig, Karl-Ernst Gillert, Hans Kröger, Wilhelm Weise (board of directors) (1970–1984) * (1985–1990) * Hans Kröger, Joachim Weltz, Hans Hoffmeister (acting) (1990–1996) * (1996–2008) *
Jörg Hacker Jörg Hinrich Hacker (born 13 February 1952) is a German microbiologist. He served as president of the Robert Koch Institute from 2008 to 2010 and of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina from 2010 to 2020. He is the editor-in-chief of the ''I ...
(2008–2010) * (2010–2015) * Lothar H. Wieler (2015–2023) * Lars Schaade (2022–)


Notable people

*
Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
(1843–1910), German physician and microbiologist. Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology in 1905. *
Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure fo ...
(1854–1915), Nobel Prize winning physician. *
Emil von Behring Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring: born Emil Adolf Behring; 15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery ...
(1854–1917), German physiologist. Received the first Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology in 1901. * Claus Schilling (1871–1946), German experimenter in Nazi human concentration camp experiments executed for war crimes, director of the tropical medicine division at the institute.


See also

*
List of national public health agencies This list of national public health agencies includes national level organizations responsible for public health, infectious disease control, and epidemiology. Many are represented in the International Association of National Public Health Inst ...
* Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel


References


External links

* (in English) {{Authority control Biosafety level 4 laboratories 1891 establishments in Germany Genetics in Germany Medical research institutes in Germany Microbiology institutes National public health agencies Organizations established in 1891 Public health organizations Research institutes in Berlin Robert Koch