EVAg

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is Germany‘s national Public Health Institute. It is the central institution of the Federal Government in the field of surveillance, control and prevention of diseases and hence also of application-oriented biomedical research. A focal point is research on infectious diseases. Laboratory work on viruses causing infectious diseases was always an essential part of the task of the RKI hosting several national and international reference laboratories like influenza, Polio and measles.

The RKI has a strong international activity and cooperates with many international partners like the ECDC, WHO, and PAHO. RKI is the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emerging Infections and Biological Threats and a partner of WHO's Global Outbreak Alert & response Network (GOARN), supporting countries worldwide to tackle outbreaks. During these activities the RKI provides international quality assessment schemes for diagnostics and reference materials. Similarly, the RKI is involved in capacity building programmes in different developing countries, as part of the Global Health Protection Programme, andhas established cooperation partners in areas of transmission of emerging viruses.