Australia's notifiable diseases status, 2010: Annual report of the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System - Notes

The Australia’s notifiable diseases status, 2010 report provides data and an analysis of communicable disease incidence in Australia during 2010. The full report is available in 16 HTML documents. The full report is also available in PDF format from the Table of contents page.

Page last updated: 25 June 2012

This extract of the NNDSS annual report 2010 was published in Communicable Diseases Intelligence Vol 36 No 1 March 2012. A print friendly full version may be downloaded as a PDF 1862 KB.

The full issue of CDI is available as a PDF file (2586 KB) or by individual articles from this issue's table of contents

Notes on interpretation

The present report is based on 2010 ‘finalised’ data from each state or territory agreed upon in June 2011 and represents a snap shot of the year after duplicate records and incorrect or incomplete data were removed. Therefore, totals in this report may vary slightly from the totals reported in CDI quarterly publications.

Analyses in this report were based on the date of disease diagnosis in an attempt to estimate disease activity within the reporting period. For the purposes of NNDSS, the date of diagnosis is the onset date or where the date of onset was not known, the earliest of the specimen collection date, the notification date, or the notification receive date. As considerable time may have elapsed between the onset and diagnosis dates for hepatitis B (unspecified), hepatitis C (unspecified) and tuberculosis, the earliest of specimen date, health professional notification date or public health unit notification receive date was used for these conditions.

Notified cases can only represent a proportion (the ‘notified fraction’) of the total incidence (Figure 1) and this has to be taken into account when interpreting NNDSS data. Moreover, the notified fraction varies by disease, by jurisdiction and by time.

Figure 1: Communicable diseases notifiable fraction

 Communicable diseases notifiable fraction

Top of page

Methods of surveillance vary between states and territories, each having different requirements for notification by medical practitioners, laboratories and hospitals. Although the National Notifiable Diseases List2 has been established, some diseases are not yet notifiable in all 8 jurisdictions (Table 2).

Table 2: Diseases notified to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, Australia 2010

Disease
Data received from
Bloodborne diseases
Hepatitis (NEC) All jurisdictions, except Western Australia
Hepatitis B (newly acquired) All jurisdictions
Hepatitis B (unspecified) All jurisdictions
Hepatitis C (newly acquired) All jurisdictions, except Queensland
Hepatitis C (unspecified) All jurisdictions
Hepatitis D All jurisdictions
Gastrointestinal diseases
Botulism All jurisdictions
Campylobacteriosis All jurisdictions, except New South Wales
Cryptosporidiosis All jurisdictions
Haemolytic uraemic syndrome All jurisdictions
Hepatitis A All jurisdictions
Hepatitis E All jurisdictions
Listeriosis All jurisdictions
Salmonellosis All jurisdictions
Shigellosis All jurisdictions
STEC, VTEC* All jurisdictions
Typhoid All jurisdictions
Quarantinable diseases
Cholera All jurisdictions
Highly pathogenic avian influenza in humans All jurisdictions
Plague All jurisdictions
Rabies All jurisdictions
Severe acute respiratory syndrome All jurisdictions
Smallpox All jurisdictions
Viral haemorrhagic fever All jurisdictions
Yellow fever All jurisdictions
Sexually transmissible infections
Chlamydial infections All jurisdictions
Donovanosis All jurisdictions
Gonococcal infection All jurisdictions
Syphilis < 2 years duration All jurisdictions
Syphilis > 2 years or unspecified duration All jurisdictions, except South Australia
Syphilis – congenital All jurisdictions
Vaccine preventable diseases
Diphtheria All jurisdictions
Haemophilus influenzae type b All jurisdictions
Influenza (laboratory confirmed) All jurisdictions
Measles All jurisdictions
Mumps All jurisdictions
Pertussis All jurisdictions
Pneumococcal disease (invasive) All jurisdictions
Poliomyelitis All jurisdictions
Rubella All jurisdictions
Rubella – congenital All jurisdictions
Tetanus All jurisdictions
Varicella zoster (chickenpox) All jurisdictions, except New South Wales
Varicella zoster (shingles) All jurisdictions, except New South Wales
Varicella zoster (unspecified) All jurisdictions, except New South Wales
Vectorborne diseases
Arbovirus infection (NEC) All jurisdictions
Barmah Forest virus infection All jurisdictions
Dengue virus infection All jurisdictions
Japanese encephalitis virus infection All jurisdictions
Kunjin virus infection All jurisdictions
Malaria All jurisdictions
Murray Valley encephalitis virus infection All jurisdictions
Ross River virus infection All jurisdictions
Zoonoses
Anthrax All jurisdictions
Australian bat lyssavirus All jurisdictions
Brucellosis All jurisdictions
Leptospirosis All jurisdictions
Lyssavirus (NEC) All jurisdictions
Ornithosis All jurisdictions
Q fever All jurisdictions
Tularaemia All jurisdictions
Other bacterial infections
Legionellosis All jurisdictions
Leprosy All jurisdictions
Meningococcal disease (invasive) All jurisdictions
Tuberculosis All jurisdictions

* Infection with Shiga toxin/verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC/VTEC).

NEC Not elsewhere classified.

Top of page

Changes in surveillance practices may have been introduced in some jurisdictions and not in others, which makes the comparison of data across jurisdictions difficult. In this report, some information was obtained from states and territories, including changes in surveillance practices, screening practices, laboratory practices, and major disease control or prevention initiatives, to assist in the interpretation of the 2010 data.

Postcode information usually reflects the residential location of the case, but this does not necessarily represent the place where the disease was acquired.

Data completeness was assessed for the notification’s sex, age at onset, and Indigenous status, and reported as the proportion of complete notifications. The completeness of data in this report is summarised in the Results.

The per cent of data completeness was defined as:

Per cent of data completeness = (total notifications – missing or unknown) / total notifications x 100

The Indigenous status was defined by the following nationally accepted values:9

1=Indigenous – (Aboriginal but not Torres Strait Islander origin)

2=Indigenous – (Torres Strait Islander but not Aboriginal origin)

3=Indigenous – (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin)

4=Not Indigenous – (not Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin)

9=Not stated

Notes on case definitions

Each notifiable disease is governed by a national surveillance case definition for reporting to the NNDSS. These case definitions were agreed by CDNA and implemented nationally from January 2004 and were used by all jurisdictions for the first time in 2005. These case definitions are reviewed by the Case Definitions Working Group (CDWG) on a regular basis, or earlier if the PHLN laboratory case definitions change, relevant new evidence or guidelines emerge, or other significant issues are identified.

The national surveillance case definitions and their review status are available from http://www.health.gov.au/casedefinitions

Communicable Diseases Intelligence subscriptions

Sign-up to email updates: Subscribe Now