[Public health and recreation: prevention pays off].

It seems as if infection prevention is mainly a term from the healthcare sector. Nevertheless, most infectious diseases spread outside the hospital. When an outbreak occurs in a recreation area, such as the norovirus infection at the jamboree in 2004 and Legionnaires' disease among travelers in 2011, a great deal of media attention is devoted to the topic. But it is much less known that a lot is done to prevent outbreaks. This is the reason why outbreaks in recreation areas are relatively rare in the Netherlands. The key to success of the approach may be the cooperation with sectors where little knowledge of infection control measures is available.