Notifiable disease surveillance, 1917 to 1991

Abstract

Notifiable diseases data are collected by States and Territories under their public health legislation. This legislation has required medical practitioners, and some other classes of people, to notify health authorities of certain communicable and other diseases. These data have been collected on a national basis since 1917. For the years 1917 to 1922 national data were published in the Medical Journal of Australia. From 1924 until the Second World War the data were published in Health, the journal of the former Commonwealth Department of Health. After the war the Commonwealth Year Book published the data and this has continued to the present. Additionally, the Commonwealth Department of Health and its successors have published an annual compilation of notifiable diseases data in the Department's Annual Report. These sources have been used to prepare an historical overview of notifiable diseases in Australia from 1917 to 1991.