Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine

The Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine opened in Hamburg, Germany on October 1, 1900, as the Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases, with a staff of 24. Its founding followed Hamburg's overhaul of its public health system after the city's severe 1892 cholera epidemic, and the institute was charged with researching diseases carried by ships and colonial trade routes and training physicians who would serve aboard ships and in overseas colonies. Based in the St. Pauli district, it is now Germany's largest tropical medicine institution, employing about 250 people, and its research concentrates on malaria and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Lassa, Marburg, Ebola and Crimean-Congo fever, alongside immunology and the epidemiology of tropical infections. The institute joined the Leibniz Association as a member institution on January 1, 2008.