Public Health Act 2005

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  • Notifiable Condition Report Form (pdf)
  • Public Health Unit contacts
  • List of all Notifiable Conditions (pdf)
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Notifiable conditions

A long history of major public health problems has created the need for public health legislation to contain the spread of communicable diseases. Death and illness from communicable diseases was significantly reduced in the 20th century, particularly vaccine preventable diseases e.g. measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, influenza, polio, etc. Other diseases, such as food and water borne diseases and sexually transmitted infections, continue to pose problems.

Emerging infections such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and bat lyssa virus, have posed new risks. Others such as dengue fever have re-emerged, increasing in frequency in recent years. Diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV and malaria, although a greater risk in other countries, are also posing an increased threat in Australia. Since 2003, avian influenza has spread to humans, raising concern for the emergence of a new pandemic influenza. Some of the successes in containing communicable diseases have been because legislation requires reporting of these diseases.

The Public Health Act 2005 aims to protect people from these conditions in ways that provide a balance between protecting public health and allowing individual rights to liberty and privacy. To fulfil this aim, information about people who have, or may have, a notifiable condition must be reported to Queensland Health and is held on a register.

The purpose of the register is to:

• Provide information to help develop public health policy and strategies and evaluate their impact
• Respond as necessary through contact tracing, infection control and provision of relevant information
• Monitor antibiotic resistance
• Identify cases of disease needing immediate public health response e.g. cases of meningococcal disease
• Monitor where and when disease occurs, and alert health workers to changes in disease occurrence in their area, eg. influenza surveillance
• Identify outbreaks and assist in their management, eg. surveillance of salmonellosis to find common source outbreaks
• Assess disease impact and help set priorities for prevention and control activities, eg. surveillance of trends in acute rheumatic fever and chronic rheumatic heart disease
• Identify risk factors for disease to determine effective prevention measures, eg. surveillance of malaria to detect high risk countries for disease exposure
• Study the value of treatments, eg. monitoring the decline in Haemophilus influenzae type b disease in response to Hib immunisation
• Identify and predict new dangers, eg. surveillance for Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.

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Information reported to the register is highly protected from disclosure, except; where there is written consent of the person to whom the information relates, when authorised under another Act or law, or to persons performing duties under the Act (such as for contact tracing).

Queensland Health can use information reported to the register to help trace and assist persons who may have been exposed to a notifiable condition to prevent the spread of the condition in the community.

Actions can also be taken to prevent a person with a controlled notifiable condition from creating a risk to the health of the public either because of the condition or by their behaviour.

• Notifiable Conditions Report Form
• Public Health Unit contacts for Notifiable Conditions

For more information about notifiable conditions:

• A to Z of communicable diseases
• Communicable Diseases Branch provides information about the unit and how they can be contacted.
• Sexual Health information
• Immunisation information
• The Public Health Regulation 2005 lists the notifiable conditions and categories in Schedule 1.
• Fact sheets about communicable diseases.
• Read a transcript of the clip about Notifiable Conditions by Dr Linda Selvey (previously Senior Director, Population Health Branch).

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