In 2013, the Hirsch Institute of Tropical Medicine (HITM) was officially inaugurated as a branch of the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Infectious Diseases at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf under the direction of Professor Dieter Häussinger. The HITM serves as a place of scientific medical knowledge transfer, postgraduate medical training, and of conducting scientific projects relating to tropical medicine and infectious diseases.

The publication relates the past activities of the institute, its history, and perspectives. Moreover, it permits a look behind the scenes during the construction of the institute in Africa and describes the living conditions and impressions of the staff.

Dieter Häussinger, Director of the HITM and the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Infectious Diseases and Professor of Internal Medicine at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, focuses on the areas of clinical and experimental hepatology and gastroenterology, he is committed to the expansion and further development of the field of infectious diseases. He encouraged the certification of his department as a Center of Infectious Diseases, the addition of a tropical medicine and an infectious diseases outpatient clinic, the building of the Liver and Infectious Diseases Center, which houses the only treatment unit in North Rhine-Westphalia for highly infectious patients, and the founding of the Hirsch Institute of Tropical Medicine.