Communicable disease

Question 1

What would make a disease be notifiable?

Answer 1

High mortality
High morbidity
Highly contagious
Expensive to treat
Effective interventions

Question 2

Who can notify?
When?
What info?
How?

Answer 2

Registered medical practitioners
Labs

Any clinical diagnoses of notifiable disease, don’t need lab confirmation

Case details, patient details

Contact proper officer of local health protection authority / PHE

Question 3

List some notifiable diseases?

Answer 3

MMR
DTP
Pertussis
Meningitis
Encephalitis
Infectious hepatitis
Scarlet fever
TB

Food poisoning

Malaria, Yellow fever, viral haemorrhagic fever, cholera, typhoid

CO poisoning

Question 4

Define cluster?

Answer 4

An aggregation of cases which may or may not be linked

Question 5

Suspected outbreak

Confirmed outbreak

Answer 5

Suspected: occurrence of more cases than normally expected within a place over a given time OR 2+ cases linked through common exposure/time/location OR a single case of rare/serious disease

Confirmed: confirmed by epidemiological/microbiological investigation

Question 6

Epidemic?

Answer 6

Occurrence in area in excess of what is expected for given time period

Question 7

Pandemic?

Answer 7

Epidemic widespread over countries

Question 8

Endemic?

Hyper-endemic?

Answer 8

Persistent level of disease occurrence

Persistently high level