What we do

Introduction to the work undertaken by the Surveillance Branch, Office of Health Protection, Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.

In this section:

Communicable Diseases Surveillance

The Surveillance Branch conducts national and international surveillance of communicable diseases and provides advice on policies and actions to minimise the impact of these diseases on the community. The Surveillance Branch is responsible for timely and accurate intelligence-gathering, analysis and reporting of communicable diseases, both current and emerging, to enable the Office of Health Protection to fulfil its role of protecting the health of the Australian community.

The Branch coordinates the provision of daily and fortnightly summary reports of communicable diseases events that are of potential interest to Australia and Australians travelling abroad. The Branch also coordinates and facilitates international issues for the Division and is involved in maintaining and strengthening international communicable disease surveillance networks.

Structure

There are three Sections within the Surveillance Branch:

Systems and Coordination Section;

Vaccine Preventable Diseases Section; and

Zoonoses, Foodborne and Emerging Infectious Diseases Section

Surveillance activities

The Surveillance Branch maintains and enhances the Biosecurity Surveillance System to provide a range of communicable disease surveillance systems including:

the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) which collates information on 65 diseases of public health importance;

the Virology and Serology Laboratory Reporting Scheme (LabVISE) that collates data on the laboratory identification of viruses and other organisms in a number of sentinel laboratories across Australia;

Outbreak Case Reporting System;

Syndromic Surveillance System (SSS); and

OzFoodnet, Australia’s national foodborne disease surveillance system.

The Branch provides surveillance data to inform disease control activities and/or policy initiatives both at the national and jurisdictional level. Data from these surveillance schemes are published quarterly in the journal Communicable Diseases Intelligence (CDI) and are reported on this website fortnightly. Specific communicable disease surveillance programs that report in CDI include:

foodborne disease;

gonococcal infections;

HIV/AIDS;

influenza;

meningococcal infections;

rare paediatric communicable diseases;

rotavirus;

tuberculosis; and

vaccine preventable disease and childhood immunisation coverage.

Other Surveillance Activities

Surveillance Branch:

Establishes mechanisms and communication pathways to ensure communicable disease surveillance data and analysis inform policy and health protection program development.

Meets international reporting obligations for the World Health Organization relating to communicable diseases.

Monitors and reports trends and changes in communicable disease patterns that may indicate increased human health risk.

Provides epidemiological and surveillance support for the National Incident Room when it is activated in response to national emergencies and input for exercises.