Abstract

In 2009, 65 diseases and conditions were nationally notifiable in Australia. States and territories reported a total of 236,291 notifications of communicable diseases to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, an increase of 48% on the number of notifications in 2008. This increase was largely due to cases of influenza A(H1N1) pandemic 2009. In 2009, the most frequently notified diseases were vaccine preventable diseases (101,627 notifications, 43% of total notifications), sexually transmissible infections (73,399 notifications, 31% of total notifications), and gastrointestinal diseases (31,697 notifications, 13% of total notifications). There were 18,861 notifications of bloodborne diseases; 8,232 notifications of vectorborne diseases; 1,919 notifications of other bacterial infections; 552 notifications of zoonoses and 4 notifications of quarantinable diseases. Commun Dis Intell 2011;35(2):61–131.

Keywords: Australia, communicable diseases, epidemiology, surveillance

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Introduction

Australia’s notifiable diseases status, 2009, is an annual surveillance report of nationally notifiable communicable diseases. Communicable disease surveillance in Australia operates at the national, jurisdictional and local levels. Primary responsibility for public health action lies with the state and territory health departments. The role of communicable disease surveillance at a national level includes:

• identifying national trends;
• guidance for policy development and resource allocation at a national level;
• monitoring the need for and impact of national disease control programs;
• coordination of response to national or multi-jurisdictional outbreaks;
• description of the epidemiology of rare diseases that occur infrequently at state and territory levels;
• meeting various international reporting requirements, such as providing disease statistics to the World Health Organization (WHO); and
• support for quarantine activities, which are the responsibility of the national government.