From mid-September, young people born between 1 May and 31 December 2004 will receive an invitation for a vaccination against meningococcal disease.

The vaccination rate for vaccines included in the National Immunisation Programme has dropped slightly by about 1 percent.

According to a survey by RIVM , 27,000 people were infected with Lyme disease in 2017. In 2014, the last time RIVM reported on the incidence of tick-borne disease, this number was 25,000.

The societal costs of Lyme disease have been determined for the Netherlands for the first time. The disease appears to cost nearly EUR 20 million each year.

One in 5 tick bites occurs in an urban area. Although most tick bites occur in the countryside, many people are bitten in urban areas as well.

For the first time, a person in the Netherlands has fallen ill after a bite from a tick carrying the tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBE virus).

In 2014, 53% of people between the ages of 12 and 80 in the Netherlands participate in some type of sport weekly.

At the start of the “Tick Awareness Week”, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and Wageningen UR are commencing a large-scale study on the long-term effects of