About communicable diseases surveillance
When talking about communicable diseases, ‘surveillance’ means the systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data about a disease.
Impact
Our surveillance activities, help to:
- better understand and respond to national trends
- inform public health policy to reduce disease
- improve responses to major disease outbreaks.
Role of the CDC
Our national surveillance work involves:
- monitoring more than 70 nationally notifiable diseases through managing the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS)
- overseeing and supporting various surveillance systems, including:
- reporting on nationally and internationally critical conditions
- coordinating surveillance planning and ensuring agile, high-quality data to monitor communicable diseases, including identifying information needs through the Australian National Surveillance Plan for COVID-19, Influenza, and RSV
- working with respiratory disease surveillance experts from states and territories, research institutions, and sentinel surveillance systems through the National Respiratory Infections Surveillance Committee
- providing epidemiological support for Communicable Disease Incidents of National Significance, national and international outbreak investigations, and public health policies and response efforts
- supporting the Communicable Diseases Network Australia to develop surveillance case definitions and Series of National Guidelines (SoNGs) for communicable diseases
- coordinating foodborne disease surveillance and investigation at the national level, as the OzFoodNet central site, monitoring the need for and effect of national disease control programs
- providing data to the World Health Organization to support global disease surveillance.
Related topics
Read more about:
- communicable diseases
- our role in emergency health management.
Date last updated: