OBJECTIVE: To establish whether the meetings of the so-called 'early warning committee' recognise all the threats to the public health in the Netherlands caused by infectious diseases. DESIGN: Retrospective and descriptive evaluation. METHOD: The information about the outbreaks of infectious diseases in the Netherlands and about events in the area of infectious diseases in foreign countries was compared with the domestic and foreign reports discussed in the regular weekly meetings of the Dutch early warning committee. For this purpose, the authors summarized the outbreaks of infectious diseases in the Netherlands in 2002 and 2003 as reported in articles in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine). This summary was then compared with the domestic reports discussed in the meetings of the early warning committee. If an outbreak was not mentioned in the meetings of the early warning committee, the cause for this was established. For the same period, a summary was made of the foreign events in the area of infectious diseases and this was also compared with the foreign reports mentioned in the meetings of the early warning committee. When an event had not been discussed in the meetings of the early warning committee, it was established on the basis of criteria whether the event could have been a threat to public health in the Netherlands. RESULTS: All outbreaks of infectious diseases in the Netherlands had been discussed in the early warning committee. Of the foreign events in 2002, 3 had not been discussed in the committee although they should have been, based on the criteria for a potential threat to the Netherlands: the outbreak of avian influenza A/H5NI in domestic fowl in Hong Kong, the increase among hospitalised patients of carriers of extended-spectrum 3-lactamase producing micro-organisms in Scotland, and outbreaks of measles in several countries. In 2003, all foreign events that could have been a threat to the Netherlands were discussed in the early warning committee. CONCLUSION: In 2002 and 2003, the meetings of the early warning committee recognised practically all the outbreaks of and threats due to infectious diseases.