German Infection Protection Act
Date: 15/12/2021
The German Infection Protection Act (IfSG) came into force on 1 January 2001 and placed the system of notifiable diseases in Germany on a new footing. The IfSG regulates which diseases must be reported in the event of suspicion, illness or death and which laboratory diagnostic evidence of pathogens must be reported. The law also defines which information must be provided by those obliged to report and which of this information must be passed on by the public health department. In addition, the way of reporting is described and sample reporting forms and instruction sheets are available. With the introduction of the IfSG, case definitions were introduced in Germany for the routine reporting of notifiable infectious diseases.
Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report
In accordance with the German Infection Protection Act, the Robert Koch Institute records and analyses data on the occurrence of various infectious diseases in Germany. These analyses are crucial for developing concepts of prevention, and for implementing effective infection control measures in order to protect the health of the population in Germany.
Each year, the results are published in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report. The executive summaries are provided in English.
To the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report
Epidemiologisches Bulletin
To provide an overview of the epidemiological situation over the course of a year, the reporting data are also published weekly (with a 3-week reporting delay) or monthly (§7.3 German Infection Protection Act) in the Epidemiologisches Bulletin.
To the Epidemiologisches Bulletin
SurvStat@RKI
SurvStat@RKI offers another way of obtaining information on the epidemiology of notifiable diseases in Germany. The application allows the retrieval of aggregated data from a limited version of the German notification system database.