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NNDSS Annual Report Writing Group

Abstract

In 2010, 65 diseases and conditions were nationally notifiable in Australia. States and territories reported a total of 209,079 notifications of communicable diseases to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, a decrease of 12% on the number of notifications in 2009. This decrease was largely due to a reduction of influenza compared with the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic 2009. In 2010, the most frequently notified diseases were sexually transmissible infections (86,620 notifications, 41.4% of total notifications), vaccine preventable diseases (61,964 notifications, 29.6% of total notifications), and gastrointestinal diseases (31,548 notifications, 15.1% of total notifications). There were 18,302 notifications of bloodborne diseases; 8,244 notifications of vectorborne diseases; 1,866 notifications of other bacterial infections; 532 notifications of zoonoses and 3 notifications of quarantinable diseases. Commun Dis Intell 2012;35(1):1–69.

Keywords: Australia, communicable diseases, epidemiology, surveillance

Introduction

Australia’s notifiable diseases status, 2010, 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.