A tick bite can make you ill. Check yourself and others for ticks after visiting green areas. If you have been bitten by a tick, it is important to remove it quickly. These pages offer information on ticks, tick bites, and the diseases that ticks can spread.
Where do ticks live
Ticks are found all over the Netherlands: in forests, parks, heaths, dunes, and gardens. They mostly live in tall grass near trees or bushes or in decomposing leaves. Ticks can attach themselves to human skin. A tick bite can make you ill. In the Netherlands, ticks can transmit Lyme disease and, in rare cases, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE).
Important to check
Check your body and clothing for ticks after visiting green areas. Ticks can attach themselves to anything, but they prefer the groin and buttocks, armpits, along the edges of underwear, behind the ears, and around the hairline at the neck. If you have a tick bite, remove the tick quickly. The longer the tick is attached to your skin, the higher the risk that it will transmit diseases.
Read more about:
When to see a doctor
Go see your GP if you have one or more of these symptoms after a tick bite:
- Expanding discolouration of the skin at the location of the tick bite. This ‘ring’ around that spot can appear for up to three months after a tick bite.
- Fever, possibly accompanied by muscle ache and joint pain, in the first weeks after the bite.
- Joint problems, skin conditions, nervous complaints or cardiac symptoms may sometimes develop. This can occur if early symptoms of Lyme disease were not treated with antibiotics. However, these symptoms may also be the first signs of the disease.
Video
Video: Ticks and tick bites
Voice-over:
Ticks are small, dark-colored creatures that live in the greenery.
Ticks can be found in the woods, dunes, parks, gardens or other green environments.
They’re usually found on the leaves of shrubs and in tall grass.
Ticks live off blood.
From leaves and bushes, ticks like to crawl onto animals or people.
There, they bite down into the skin to suck out blood.
Ticks are very small.
You generally won’t feel a tick bite.
Briefly brushing your body past a bush could already be enough.
Some ticks are infected with a bacteria.
These bacteria can cause Lyme’s disease in humans.
Lyme’s disease is usually treatable with antibiotics, but sometimes it can have dire consequences.
Not every tick carries the bacteria.
Two or three out of a hundred tick bites result in Lyme’s disease.
Have you been out in nature?
Always check yourself and each other for tick bites.
Ticks can attach themselves anywhere.
For example, in places such as the groin, backs of the knees, armpits, butt crack, or behind the ears.
So check your entire body carefully.
Are you alone? Use a mirror.
Have you found a tick on your skin?
Remove it carefully with a set of sharp tweezers or a tick remover.
This way you’ll lower the chances of infection.
Grab the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull it off slowly and straight up.
Disinfect the bite afterwards. Also take note of the date and the location of the bite on the body.
If you experience symptoms later, your doctor will be able to connect these to the bite.
Ticks can also remain on clothes.
Do you want to make sure your clothes are free of ticks?
Wash them in the laundry machine on at least 60 degrees.
Always remove a tick as quickly as possible.
Has a tick been in your skin for more than 24 hours?
Contact your doctor to discuss if treatment is necessary.
Keep an eye on the spot for three months after the bite.
A red, often ring-shaped spot that grows larger, fever, muscle aches or joint pain are symptoms that indicate Lyme’s disease.
Are you suffering from these? Go see your doctor immediately.
Have you been out in nature? Do a tick check.
Text on screen: Want to know more? Visit rivm.nl/en/ticks
Image: Logo National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
