2024-03-14 15:15:30
The Standing Vaccination Commission has been known to most people since the Corona pandemic at the latest. Now there have been personnel changes.
The Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko), which is responsible for vaccination recommendations in Germany, has a new chairman: the virologist Klaus Überla. The doctor is director of the Virological Institute at the University Hospital Erlangen and the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, as the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Thursday. This week, the 19-member committee elected resident gynecologist Marianne Röbl-Mathieu as its deputy. Both have been members of Stiko since 2017.
New appointments have been planned for some time
The committee was largely reorganized this year and met for the first joint meeting on March 12th and 13th. The Federal Ministry of Health regularly appointed new members of the voluntary committee. 14 of the 19 members are starting their first term in office. The former chairman, virologist Thomas Mertens, has left.
The major personnel changes had been announced for some time. As a result, the appointment period was also limited to a maximum of three periods of three years each. This is intended to help ensure the independence of the committee, as the ministry said. “For the first time, experts from the disciplines of mathematical modeling, communication science and geriatrics are represented in this appointment period,” explained the RKI.
Prevention strategy against RSV first topic of the meeting
The Stiko makes recommendations on vaccinations for the population in Germany. “The STIKO will initially maintain the previously prioritized topics. Accordingly, in addition to further processing the RSV prevention strategies, the focus is on vaccinations against influenza, COVID-19, meningococci and pneumococci for 2024,” said the RKI. In the first meeting, the committee dealt with prevention strategies for infants and seniors against diseases caused by the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).