For more than 100 years, RIVM has been promoting public health and safeguarding a healthy and safe environment. We have a central role in infectious disease control, national prevention and population screening programmes and monitoring our population’s health and the state of our environment. We support citizens, professionals and national and local authorities in the challenge of keeping ourselves and our environment healthy, safe and sustainable. Our ambition is to be a trusted advisor using independent research as the basis for our advisory work. Below we present some of the global challenges we work on and elaborate on our tasks and international activities.
Highlighted themes
Climate change and Health
Safe, healthy and sustainable food
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
Population Screening programmes
Circular Economy
Immunisation and vaccination
What we do
International collaboration
National tasks and activities
International projects and networks
COVID-19 in the Netherlands
RIVM advises the Dutch government on how to control the coronavirus as effectively as possible, monitors the COVID-19 outbreak and conducts research into SARS-CoV-2. RIVM is coordinating the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccinations in the Netherlands. Our institute is responsible for coordinating the storage and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in the Netherlands (including the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, St Eustatius, Saba, Curaçao and St Maarten).
We provide weekly updates and data on COVID-19 in the Netherlands. In addition to our general COVID-19 weekly epidemiological update, we also publish a COVID-19 weekly update for the CAS and BES islands: the islands of Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten and the special municipalities Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. A newsletter for professionals involved in the COVID-19 vaccination is published regularly on our website.
Would you like to be kept informed on our work and activities? Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter. Read our international newsletter issue 1, 2022.
Information for refugees from Ukraine
Information on screening programmes, vaccinations for children, the flu jab and more is available in English, Ukrainian and Russian. We have brought together all information on this web page.
News
Tailor-made information will help immigrants make decisions on taking part in screening programmes
Immigrants are relatively less likely to take part in preventive screening programmes, such as cancer screening. This is partly due to the language barrier and a lack of knowledge, according to a doctoral thesis by Nora Hamdiui.
Can healthy gut microbes protect us against antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
It is largely assumed within the scientific community that a healthy intestinal microbiome can provide resistance against the settling, growth and multiplication of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
People who work at night are more likely to get infected with coronavirus
People who occasionally or regularly work at night are 37% more likely to test positive for coronavirus than people who only work during the daytime. This is one of the conclusions of a study by the RIVM (Netherlands).
Enthusiasm and challenges when adopting a broad view of health
More and more parties in the Netherlands, including healthcare and welfare organisations, local authorities and municipal and communal healthcare services, are using so-called ‘broad health concept’.
More STI tests conducted by Sexual Health Centres
In 2021, more people visited a Sexual Health Centre (SHC) to get tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than in 2020. This figure is still lower than in 2019, the year before the coronavirus outbreak.
Ten years of Tick Radar 80,000 tick bite reports; chances of being bitten highest in Drenthe
After recording 80,000 tick bites in 10 years via Tekenradar.nl, we now know that you are most likely to be bitten by a tick in Drenthe. Quickly removing the tick halves the chance of contracting Lyme disease.
