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.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the West Nile Virus in 2020 show that so-called emerging zoonoses pose a risk to the Netherlands.

Employees at sewage and wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands and Germany are not more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria than other people.

In 2020, the year of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, resistant bacteria were not found more often in patients in the Netherlands than before the outbreak.

The new Horizon 2020 project RISK-HUNT3R: RISK assessment of chemicals integrating HUman centric Next generation Testing strategies promoting the 3Rs was launched on 1 June.

Each year, at the request of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, RIVM prepares an overview of the most important zoonoses and indicates their prevalence in the Netherlands.

Worldwide, the number of bacteria resistant to antibiotics is increasing. In the Netherlands, this number generally remains stable and is less high than in many other countries.

The focus of our annual report State of Zoonotic Diseases 2018 is prevention, with the emphasis on the production chains of foods of animal origin.

RIVM has derived temporary background values for two types of PFAS in Dutch soil: PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) and PFOA (perfluoro octanoic acid).