Disease Reporting

Communicable and infectious disease surveillance systems require the government (i.e. state or local public health department) to collect personal information related to a communicable or infectious disease. This information is reported, without the patient’s consent, by the diagnosing medical provider and, in some cases, the laboratory performing the infectious disease diagnostic test.

What information is “reportable” to the public health department when infectious diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis, HIV/AIDS, cholera, or e-coli are identified or suspected?

Should the “case” be reported with personal and identifiable information? Why or Why not?

What, if any, protections are established to protect an individual’s personal health information when diagnosed with a communicable disease? Do these protections conflict with disease reporting requirements?

One form of disease surveillance and disease prevention is for the government (usually the health department) to actively look for cases of disease by soliciting from an infectious person the names and location of people exposed to his/her communicable disease and to provide a diagnostic assessment to the exposed. If given the opportunity, would you choose to personally notify someone you exposed to a communicable disease, like pertussis (whooping cough) for example, or choose to have a health official make the notification? Why this choice?

If you were the person exposed by an infectious patient with a potentially deadly disease, would you prefer to be notified by the government or the exposed patient?

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