Robert Koch Institute

The Robert Koch Institute (abbreviated 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.

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 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 Gemany, 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.

RKI's focus is on research, some 450 of about 1,100 members of staff are scientists. The institute consists of:

  • Department for Infectious Diseases
  • Department for Epidemiology and Health Reporting
  • Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology
  • Centre for Biological Threats and Special Pathogens
  • Methodology and Research Infrastructure
  • project groups (Immune Defense Mechanisms; Acinetobacter baumanii; Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms; Epidemiologically 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 Ressources)[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

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, in 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. Neufeld's Deputy Director from 1919 to 1933 was Walter Levinthal.[10]

During Third Reich, the Institute was also involved in atrocities committed in the name of national socialism. In 1941 the Institute was involved in setting up experiments into typhus vaccines at Buchenwald Concentration Camp which resulted in the deaths of 127 of the 537 camp inmates involved.[11] The institute was renamed the Robert Koch Institute in 1942.

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 till then was occupied with infectious diseases alone – now had a second big topic: non-communicable diseases and their risk factors.[12]

Presidents

  • Robert Koch (1891–1904)
  • Georg Gaffky (1904–1913)
  • Friedrich Loeffler (1913–1915)
  • Fred Neufeld (1915–1933)
  • Friedrich Karl Kleine (1933–1934)
  • Richard Otto (1934–1935)
  • Eugen Gildemeister (1935–1945)
  • Otto Lentz (1945–1949)
  • Bruno Harms (1949–1952)
  • Georg Henneberg (1952–1969)
  • Raettig, Gillert, Kröger, Weise (1970–1984)
  • Wilhelm Weise 1985–1990
  • Kröger, Weltz, Hoffmeister (acting) (1990–1996)
  • Reinhard Kurth (1996–2008)
  • Jörg Hacker (2008–2010)
  • Reinhard Burger (2010–2015)
  • Lothar H. Wieler (from 2015)

Notable persons

  • 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

Notes and references

  1. ↑ "Protecting Health – Assessing Risks. Who we are, what we look back on, what we do and will do" (PDF). www.rki.de/EN. 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  2. ↑ "The Public Health Institute. 125 Years Robert Koch Institute" (PDF). www.rki.de/EN. 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  3. ↑ "Reports from the field: RKI staff responds to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa". www.rki.de/EN. 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  4. ↑ "RKI's International Activities". www.rki.de/EN. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  5. ↑ "The BSL-4 laboratory at the Robert Koch Institute". www.rki.de/EN. Retrieved 2018-08-22.
  6. ↑ "The Institute – Departments and Units". www.rki.de/EN. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  7. ↑ "Museum and Mausoleum at RKI". www.rki.de/EN. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  8. ↑ RKI: History
  9. ↑ "Robert Koch". www.rki.de/EN. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  10. ↑ Landmark Experiments in Molecular Biology, Michael Fry
  11. ↑ Evans, Richard J. (2009). The Third Reich at War: 1939–1945 (reprint ed.). Penguin. ISBN 978-1101022306.
  12. ↑ Das besondere Stück: Eine Institutsgeschichte in Bildern. Berlin: Robert Koch Institute. 2017. pp. 107ff. ISBN 978-3-89606-284-0.

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