Notifiable infectious diseases
For the infectious diseases for which a reporting obligation applies, we are obliged to report a positive result to your local GGD. If you or your practitioner requests one of these tests, you must give us your telephone number in advance so that the local GGD can contact you and/or your practitioner in connection with the results. The law on public health requires us to do this. We are not allowed to offer anonymity in these tests. Someone from the GGD will contact you strictly confidentially if the test turns out positive.
If you want to do a test that requires notification, after you have already reported to the GGD, please indicate this at "remarks" during the ordering process.
The duty to report can help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The duty to report is regulated in the Public Health Act.
The obligation to report requires doctors and medical microbiology laboratories to report certain infectious diseases to the Municipal Health Service (GGD). The GGD traces the source of the infection and checks whether the patient's contacts are at risk of infection. After that, the GGD can take measures to protect contacts and prevent the disease from spreading.
Medical data
What happens to my data if I have a notifiable disease?
After your doctor or the laboratory reports the disease to the GGD, the doctor in charge of infectious diseases at the GGD will assess the risk of infection and whether measures are needed to protect public health. If so, the GGD will contact you. Sometimes it will ask for additional information, but the GGD may also want to discuss which measures should be taken. For example, tracing the source of the infection, giving medication to contacts or giving hygiene advice.
The GGD then reports the notifiable infectious disease to the Infectious Disease Control Centre (CIb) of the RIVM National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. This is done pseudonymously. Your personal details are therefore not known to the RIVM.
The CIb uses the information about infectious diseases that are subject to compulsory notification for such purposes as monitoring trends and the occurrence of these diseases, creating and evaluating national policy, such as the National Vaccination Programme, and, if necessary, taking control measures at the national level. In the event of a threat of an international infectious disease outbreak, the CIb assesses whether reports should be passed on to the World Health Organization.
Information about infectious diseases that are notifiable in the Netherlands is then reported to theEuropean Centre for Disease Prevention and Control(ECDC), which uses the information for monitoring trends in infectious diseases and evaluating policy at the European level.
What infectious diseases are notifiable?
Here you can read for which infectious diseases we are obliged to report:
https://www.rivm.nl/meldingsplicht-infectieziekten/welke-infectieziekten-zijn-meldingsplichtig
An overview of the GGDs in the Netherlands can be found here:
If you want to reread the full law look here: