The main responsibilities of the Directorate of Health are guided by the Medical Director of Health and Public Health Act no. 41/2007:

• To advise the Minister of Health and other Government bodies, health professionals, and the public on health, disease prevention, and health promotion matters.

• To sponsor and organise public health initiatives, and monitor their effectiveness.

• To promote improvements in health care quality.

• To supervise the health care services and health care professionals.

• To monitor prescription medicines and promote their prudent use by individuals and health care professionals.

• To collect and process health and healthcare services data and promote research in that field. This includes maintaining national registers on health, diseases, drug prescriptions, births, deaths, and the work and performance of health services.

• To handle complaints from healthcare users.

• To issue licenses to healthcare professionals and ensure their education meets requirements at all times.

• To be responsible for the implementation of infectious disease control measures, cf. the Act on Health Security and Communicable Diseases.

The Chief Epidemiologist of Iceland is responsible for communicable disease control under the Minister's overall direction.

Under the Communicable Diseases Act No. 40/2026, the Chief Epidemiologist's role is mainly to:

• Plan and coordinate communicable disease control and immunisation (vaccination) across the country, including issuing guidelines for responding to epidemics.

• Maintain an epidemiological register covering communicable diseases, pathogens and events under the Communicable Diseases Act, immunisations, antibiotic use and screening.

• Provide doctors and other healthcare professionals with information on the spread of communicable diseases, both in Iceland and abroad, on a regular basis and as required.

• Advise doctors and others involved in communicable disease control.

• Oversee the prevention of communicable diseases, including providing the public with information and education on these matters.

• Act as Iceland's point of contact with the corresponding contact point of the World Health Organization in accordance with the International Health Regulations.

• Carry out epidemiological investigations into the source of infection and, where appropriate, initiate contact tracing when an outbreak or epidemic that may threaten human health occurs. Make recommendations to the Minister on whether public communicable disease control measures should be implemented.

• Take decisions in response to the risk of infection spreading from a specific individual, such as decisions on medical examination, quarantine, isolation or other necessary measures, and, where appropriate, bring cases before the courts.

• Open government quarantine facilities, as deemed necessary, in response to epidemics.

• Oversee the maintenance of emergency stockpiles.

• Decide which immunisations are to be offered at any given time.

• Issue professional directives and guidelines

• Maintain a register of healthcare service providers

• Organise and maintain national registers of health status, causes of death, diseases, accidents, prescriptions, births, and the activities and performance of the healthcare service

• Issue health reports and send the Minister an annual summary of adverse events, investigation results, and case outcomes

• Assess the quality and performance of the healthcare service and publish the results in health reports

• There is extensive international collaboration across the Directorate's projects.

Further legal provisions on the Directorate's role appear in the Communicable Diseases Act No. 40/2026 (Icelandic) and the Health Service Act No. 40/2007. The Directorate's various roles and duties are also addressed in regulations; see further under Laws and Regulations on this website.

More about the role of individual offices within the Directorate.