biology

Notifiable disease

Notifiable disease is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Notifiable disease rather than just read about it. In short: A notifiable disease is any disease that is required by law to be reported to government authorities. The collation of information allows the authorities to monitor the disease, and provides early warning of possible outbreaks.

Key takeaways

Notifiable disease belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Notifiable disease to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Notifiable disease from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A notifiable disease is any disease that is required by law to be reported to government authorities. The collation of information allows the authorities to monitor the disease, and provides early warning of possible outbreaks. In the case of livestock diseases, there may also be the legal requirement to kill the infected livestock upon notification. Many governments have enacted regulations for reporting of both human and animal (generally livestock) diseases.

Global

Human The World Health Organization's International Health Regulations 1969 require disease reporting to the organization in order to help with its global surveillance and advisory role. The current (1969) regulations are rather limited with a focus on reporting of three main diseases: cholera, yellow fever and plague. Smallpox was a contagious disease during the 18th-20th century. It was endemic until mass vaccination, after which WHO certified Smallpox to be eradicated. This marked the first (and thus far only) human disease to be successfully eradicated. The revised International Health Regulations 2005 broadens this scope and is no longer limited to the notification of specific diseases. Whilst it does identify a number of specific diseases, it also defines a limited set of criteria to assist in deciding whether an event is notifiable to WHO. WHO states that "Notification is now based on the identification within a State Party’s territory of an "event that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern". This non-disease specific definition of notifiable events expands the scope of the IHR (2005) to include any novel or evolving risk to international public health, taking into account the context in which the event occurs. Such notifiable events can extend beyond communicable diseases and arise from any origin or source. This broad notification requirement aims at detecting, early on, all public health events that could have serious and international consequences, and preventing or containing them at source through an adapted response before they spread across borders."

Animal The OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) monitors specific animal diseases on a global scale.

Diseases Notifiable to the OIE

Australia

Human The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) was established in 1990. Notifications are made to the States or Territory health authority and computerised, de-identified records are then supplied to the Department of Health and Ageing for collation, analysis and publication. The Australian national notifiable diseases list and case definitions are available online.

Animal Within Australia the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry regulates the notification of infectious animal diseases.

National List of Notifiable Animal Diseases State and Territory Notifiable Animal Diseases Lists

Brazil

Human Notification is regulated under Brazilian Ministry of Health Ordinance number 1.271 of June 6, 2014.

List of national notifiable diseases

Canada Diseases of concern to public health officials have been tracked in Canada since 1924. A subcommittee of the National Advisory Committee on Epidemiology was set up in 1987. At the time, 34 diseases were surveyed on the list of communicable diseases while another 13 were recommended for addition to the list. As of 1 January 2000, a total of 43 diseases were given the status of notifiable. In 2006, the Final report and recommendations from the National Notifiable Diseases Working Group found that certain diseases should be added and certain diseases should not. The Canadian Notifiable Disease Surveillance System is a searchable database tool provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Human List of national notifiable diseases

France

Human The first policies of mandatory notifiable disease originated a long time ago in France, while exact times are unclear we know that at the end of the 18th century Plague was a highly enforced notifiable disease. The current list of notifiable diseases is written in the Code de la santé publique Article D3113-6 and Article D3113-7 (last revision has been made in 2012), it contains 36 diseases : 34 infectious ones and 2 non-infectious disease directly linked to the environment (Lead poisoning and Mesothelioma). Notifications of both the disease and the distribution of specific medicine are made to a regional desk governmental agency called Agence régionale de santé by :

Physician and Biologists, both in public or in private workplaces, Physician controllers (MISP) and Administratives civil-servant from Directions départementales des affaires sanitaires et sociales (DDASS), Epidemiologists from the Institut de veille sanitaire (InVS), Drugs sellers. Anonymous records are then used by the government health-insurance system. Ill people must cure them and in many case are put in quarantine.

Animal Only infectious diseases are notifiable to the authorities. The complete list can be found in the Article L. 223-22 du code rural, it is updated with every new entry on World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) lists A and B and with European Union mandatory lists.

New Zealand

Human Notification is regulated under the Health Act 1956, except for tuberculosis which is regulated under the Tuberculosis Act 1948. All diseases

List of national notifiable diseases

United Kingdom

Human

Requirement for the notification of infectious diseases originated near the end of the 19th century. The list started with a few select diseases and has since grown to 31. Currently disease notification for humans in the UK is regulated under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 and Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1988. The governing body is Public Health England Public Health England List of Notifiable Diseases can be found here Notifiable diseases and causative organisms: how to report.

Children There are also requirements for notification specific to children in the National standards for under 8s day care and childminding that state:

"Office for Standards in Education should be notified of any food poisoning affecting two or more children looked after on the premises, any child having meningitis or the outbreak on the premises of any notifiable disease identified as such in the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 or because the notification requirement has been applied to them by regulations (the relevant regulations are the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1988).

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Notifiable disease

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Notifiable disease claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Notifiable disease before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Notifiable disease ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Notifiable disease

In research: Notifiable disease appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Notifiable disease in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Notifiable disease is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Health law, Infectious diseases, Medical crime, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Notifiable disease outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Notifiable disease in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Notifiable disease means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Notifiable disease out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Notifiable disease in simple terms?

Why does Notifiable disease matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Notifiable disease?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Notifiable disease.