Vaccinations

After registering with the municipality, you will receive a letter from the RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, National Institute for Public Health and Environment), which is the agency that keeps track of childhood immunizations in the Netherlands.

Your children will receive a letter listing the type of vaccination and the date and location where it will be administered. If you have a vaccination booklet or data sheet from a foreign country, you can provide this to the government for their files. You can get exemptions if your child has already been inoculated for certain vaccines before moving to the Netherlands.

Information about the National Immunization Program, including at which ages children in the Netherlands are expected to get certain vaccines, can be obtained in English on the RIVM website.

From the ages of 0 to 4, children are regularly invited to appointments at their nearest consultatiebureau, but this is in addition to their registration at your own GP. Most vaccines are administered at your local consultatiebureau (child health clinic), rather than at your general practitioner’s office.

For all other (non-emergency) health matters, you should contact your doctor’s office. In the Netherlands, you need to register with a family doctor (huisarts) or general practitioner. It is common for children to go to their parents’ family doctor, and paediatricians in the Netherlands generally only see children with special needs or conditions.