Frank von Sonnenburg

Abstract

Specialist in infectious diseases and travel medicine. He was born on May 8, 1946, in Munich, Germany, and died there of brain cancer on Aug 21, 2020, aged 74 years. Franz-Josef Falkner (Frank) von Sonnenburg, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU) in Germany, had research interests that ranged from travellers' diarrhoea and Lyme disease to HIV/AIDS, malaria, and echinococcosis. He also studied the epidemiology of HIV in Africa, organised a local AIDS control programme in Tanzania, and undertook vaccine trials on diseases that included hepatitis, influenza H5N1, and typhoid fever. In addition, von Sonnenburg worked tirelessly for the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM), and made an important contribution to its GeoSentinel reporting programme. Reflecting on what she describes as von Sonnenburg's “great bandwidth of interests”, Camilla Rothe of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the University Hospital LMU, speaks of his abundant self-confidence: “The most self-confident person I have met…if there was a problem in need of a solution he would find it…he would clench his teeth and not release the problem until it was solved.” Having studied medicine at the universities of Cologne and Munich, von Sonnenburg began his career in 1974 with internships in Munich, Berlin, and New York. His focus was on infectious diseases, and in 1981 he joined the University of Munich's Institute of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine as an Assistant Professor. In 1987, after a year at the University of Hawaii to do a masters in public health, he moved to Tanzania where the HIV/AIDS control programme he set up in the country's southwest Mbeya Region continues to this day. During the next 3 years he worked for WHO as a medical officer in its Global Programme on AIDS before returning to the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine as Deputy Director and Head of its Section of International Medicine and Public Health. von Sonnenburg was a lifelong champion of the importance of vaccination. He was involved in many vaccine trials, including a recent phase 1 clinical trial of a prophylactic mRNA-based vaccine using rabies virus glycoprotein. His advocacy of the development of new vaccines and the wider use of existing ones earned him membership of the German Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO). Based at the Robert Koch Institute, STIKO offers policy advice to the German Government. He took the role seriously, says Professor Hans-Dieter Nothdurft of the LMU Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine. “He was always trying to counter people's fears about vaccination.” Between 1997 and 2005, von Sonnenburg was the secretary and treasurer of ISTM. His flair for generating income through conferences and other events put the society on a sound commercial footing: efforts that were rewarded with a 2-year stint as its President that started in 2007. As Martin Grobusch, Professor of Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Centers, comments: “Frank also made a major contribution [to ISTM] in fostering sentinel surveillance, which has evolved into an important tool in detecting trends in emerging infectious diseases as they surface among travellers.” Founded by ISTM in 1995, GeoSentinel is a worldwide data collection network for the surveillance of travel-related morbidity. It uses travel medicine's regular encounters with people returning to their home countries as a means of collecting information. von Sonnenburg's particular contribution was in dealing with data from LMU's Travel Clinic, one of GeoSentinel's prime sources. He was exceptionally computer literate, says Nothdurft. “He managed for the first time to get data automatically, not manually, from the databank in Munich into the GeoSentinel database.” “Frank was driven by a commitment to public health,” says Grobusch. Nothdurft describes von Sonnenburg as persuasive and with much valued judgment. “He thought a lot about his discussions with others and always considered their views seriously. When he felt that something needed to be done, he did all he could to convince others.” Although von Sonnenburg remained at the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine on reaching retirement age, he did reduce his professorship to a part-time post. He understood the importance of a work–life balance, according to Rothe. “He always worked very hard, but he enjoyed life in a very intense way…and encouraged his students to do the same.” Nothdurft recalls his friend's love of water sports. “He was always fanatical about them….I think that was one of the reasons he went to Hawaii.” von Sonnenburg leaves a wife Angelika, and sons Markus and David.