Epidemiology: An introduction

2.2.1 Notifiable diseases

The diseases listed below are notifiable and should be reported to the Office of National Statistics.

The list is as follows ?

Diseases notifiable (to Local Authority Proper Officers) under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010:

NB: FLU IS NOT A NOTIFIABLE DISEASE

• Acute encephalitis
• Acute meningitis
• Acute poliomyelitis
• Acute infectious hepatitis
• Anthrax
• Botulism
• Brucellosis
• Cholera
• Diphtheria
• Enteric fever (typhoid or paratyphoid fever)
• Food poisoning
• Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS)
• Infectious bloody diarrhoea
• Invasive group A streptococcal disease and scarlet fever
• Legionnaires? Disease
• Leprosy
• Malaria
• Measles
• Meningococcal septicaemia
• Mumps
• Plague
• Rabies
• Rubella
• SARS
• Smallpox
• Tetanus
• Tuberculosis
• Typhus
• Viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF)
• Whooping cough
• Yellow fever

As well as the basic data on incidence and prevalence of disease, epidemiology is particularly interested in the patterns of disease distribution in human populations. In particular, it aims to discover who develops health problems, when they contract illness and in which locations a problem is particularly prevalent. Thus disease is studied in relation to persons, place and time. Each of these is considered in turn below.

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