Communicable Disease Prevention & Control
Assistant Director: Rosemary Lester
Enquiries: Tel (61 3) 1300 651 160
The Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Unit aims to reduce the risk of current and emerging infectious diseases in Victoria through the implementation of patient focussed and population focussed control strategies based on surveillance and risk assessment.
The bases of actions against infectious diseases are:
- surveillance – to monitor the epidemiology of the different conditions, analyse trends and trigger appropriate prevention or control actions
- good public health laboratory facilities – to enable the early detection and expert characterisation of individual cases of infectious disease and outbreaks
- good public health infrastructure – to enable timely and appropriate action in the prevention and control of diseases.
In Victoria, public health action on infectious diseases is mostly related to those diseases that are notifiable under current legislation. The Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 2001 require that scheduled infectious diseases, either on clinical suspicion or laboratory confirmation, must be notified to DHS.
Key Program Areas
- General Disease Control including Immunisation
- Communicable Diseases Policy Planning and Information
- Enteric Diseases
- Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance
- TB Control
- BBV/STI