Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is a great pleasure and privilege for us to welcome you to Munich on behalf of ESCMID and ISC to the 17^th ECCMID / 25^th ICC, the first joint meeting of both organising societies.

We are anticipating the largest and most important meeting in the field of clinical microbiology and infections ever seen in Europe, addressing all the relevant aspects of current infectious diseases and clinical microbiology, including developments in opportunistic infections, emerging and re emerging diseases, microbial resistance, new antimicrobials, molecular biology, microbiological pathogenesis, vaccines, and public health issues. The interest of the scientific community became apparent by the remarkable number of anticipated participants, as well as the overwhelming number of submitted abstracts.

Delegates will be pleased to find a programme of the highest scientific quality with keynote lectures, symposia, meet-the-expert sessions, educational workshops, poster sessions and additional meetings of the study and working groups of both societies. To the symposia, the most knowledgeable specialists on the selected subjects have been invited, speakers in the oral sessions have been chosen among the authors of the best abstracts, according to the rating by the reviewers. The thematic spectrum of these free communications is wide-ranging and interesting, thanks to a large number of submissions received for presentation at this conference in Munich.

In addition, ESCMID will honour its 2007 Excellence and Young Investigator Awardees and ISC will present the Hamao Umezawa, the Tom Bergan, the John David Williams and the Masaaki Ohkoshi Awards with special lectures.

We hope you will enjoy the conference in one of Europe’s first-class congress venues and feel informed on the latest scientific achievements. Last but not least, you will hopefully meet a lot of friends and colleagues from around the world.

Whilst the programme is packed and of a top-notch quality, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to discover Munich, the capital of Bavaria and one of the most beautiful and dynamic cities in Germany.
Besides the picturesque landscape surrounding Munich, you will find a lot of architectural and cultural highlights, in particular its world-class museums and galleries of classical and contemporary arts.

We wish you a fruitful conference and an enjoyable stay in Munich!

Prof. Bernhard R. Ruf Congress President	Prof. Kurt G. Naber ISC President	Prof. S. Ragnar Norrby ESCMID President	Prof. Andreas Voss Programme Director