Disease surveillance
Disease surveillance is the first defence against dengue. Over the past five years there has been a shift in emphasis from 'dengue surveillance' to surveillance for 'imported cases' of dengue. This is because a viraemic traveller (imported case) could readily initiate an outbreak in north Queensland.
The Tropical Population Health Network's Communicable Diseases Control (CDC) team relies on general practitioners, emergency department doctors and diagnostic laboratories to notify them of possible cases of dengue, particulary in people who have recently arrived from tropical countries. These doctors are asked to notify Tropical Population Health Network immediately upon clinical suspicion, rather than waiting for a laboratory result.
If the patient has no travel history, this may indicate that the patient probably became infected by a dengue-infected mosquito in their local area (local transmission), and therefore the area may be in the early stages of an outbreak.
Early notification enables TPHUN to control mosquitoes promptly to prevent transmission of the virus to other humans. Any delay in notification can mean the difference between managing a sporadic case of dengue and managing an outbreak with multiple cases.
During an outbreak, CDC continues to communicate regularly with GPs, hospital emergency department doctors and local pathology laboratories to ask them to be on alert for dengue cases and/or pathology results consistent with dengue. This way, CDC can be alerted early to the new cases and new outbreak locations. It is important that medical practitioners continue to request dengue testing throughout the duration of the outbreak.
Other languages