It was with deep sadness that we received the message on Tuesday 17 June 2014 informing us of the loss of a great friend and mentor. Ragnar Norrby was the Editor-in-Chief of the present journal and we were his collaborators. The following tribute to Ragnar attempts to describe, very briefly, his work within our medical area and his support of our editorial work.
Ragnar Norrby completed his medical studies in 1970 at Göteborg University. In that same year he also received his PhD, the title of his dissertation being Studies on the host cell penetration of Toxoplasma gondii. He continued his training as a physician in Göteborg and achieved formal competence as a specialist in clinical virology in 1973 and in infectious diseases in 1976.
After a 2-y period at the research laboratories of Merck Sharp & Dome in New Jersey, USA, Ragnar Norrby was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Umeå University in 1980. From 1983 to 1987 he was also the Medical Director of Umeå University Hospital. In 1988 he moved to Lund University, where he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology until 2001. During this period he spent a year as a visiting professor at the Department of Microbiology, Chinese University of Hong Kong. From 1997 to 1999 he was the Chairman of the Swedish Society of Medicine, i.e., the scientific organization of the Swedish medical profession.
In 2001 Ragnar Norrby was appointed Director General of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control in Stockholm, an expert government agency for epidemiological surveillance, special diagnostic procedures, and epidemiological research in infectious diseases. He had an extraordinary competence for the assignment and an aptitude for tackling problems in all these areas. He placed special emphasis on the control of antibiotic resistance and the introduction of population-based vaccines for children. He was not afraid of difficult situations, was always ready to take decisions and, equally characteristic, was ready to change his decision when rarely indicated. He remained in his position as Director until his retirement in 2009.
When he became Director General in Stockholm, Ragnar Norrby utilized his authority as an educator in the media to communicate the benefits of child vaccines. He opposed the anti-vaccination movement and informed the Swedish public of the consequences of discontinuity in vaccination. One example he utilized was the Swedish experience following the interruption of the use of the vaccination against pertussis in the 1980s. He informed the general population about falsified results on autism and child vaccination. At the same time, Ragnar Norrby emphasized the need for continuous surveillance and registration of side effects. In line with that, he presented a programme for the follow-up of human papillomavirus vaccination.
Ragnar Norrby made significant progress in studies on antibacterial agents, on cephalosporins, and on various aspects of resistance in particular. His scientific achievements did, however, cover broad areas, including respiratory and urinary tract infections, nephropathia epidemica, and travellers’ diarrhoea. During the 1990s he also participated as a senior investigator in Borrelia epidemiology in southern Sweden, a region of high prevalence.
From 2006 to 2013, Ragnar Norrby was the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) localized in Seoul, South Korea. IVI was established as an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme in 1997, signed by 40 nations and the World Health Organization. The Institute conducts research in more than 30 countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with a special focus on new vaccines against enteric and diarrheal diseases, but also on encephalitis and dengue fever. As late as in May 2014, an article by Ragnar Norrby on future possibilities for dengue vaccination was published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection.
In 1994 Ragnar Norrby became Chairman of the Society of the Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases. From 1996 he shared editorship of the journal with Stellan Bengtsson, who passed away in 1998. After that, Ragnar Norrby became the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. All through these years, his abilities as an Editor have been helpful to us, the editorial staff and the Society. He never hesitated in moments of decision regarding publication policy and always had the quality of articles in mind. In cases of minor or major problems occurring during the process of manuscript handling, he always gave wise support. We, his colleagues in the Society and the editorial staff, have lost a great visionary and mentor. We will continue the work we shared with him and hope to be able to live up to his high standards, aiming to maintain the high quality of the journal.