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Public Health and Notifiable Diseases

Checked: 29-07-2024 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 28-07-2026

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)

The UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) website has a comprehensive list of infectious diseases with advice on recognition and management.

Notifiable diseases

Inform UKHSA immediately if you suspect a notifiable disease. A list of notifiable diseases is available on the their website. Suspicion of a notifiable infection is all that is required and accuracy of diagnosis is secondary. Clinicians should therefore report suspicion of notifiable disease without delay rather than waiting for confirmatory test.

Please see the section below for advice on how to refer.

South West Health Protection Team (Bristol)

Registered medical practitioners (RMPs) have a statutory duty to notify the 'proper officer' at their local council or local health protection team (HPT) of suspected cases of certain infectious diseases. Complete a Notification form (also available as EMIS template) immediately on diagnosis of a suspected notifiable disease.

Send the form to the proper officer within 3 days or notify them verbally within 24 hours if the case is urgent.

Contact should be by phone, encrypted email or letter:

Telephone: 0300 303 8162. Out of hours for health professionals requesting urgent advice: 0300 303 8162 option 1.
Email: swhpt@ukhsa.gov.uk
Address: 2 Rivergate, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS1 6EH

Find your local health protection team in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

NBT - Infectious and tropical diseases

North Bristol Trust offers a comprehensive service for patients with suspected infectious or tropical diseases.

See their Infectious diseases - for clinicians webpage which includes details on how to get urgent or OOH advice. There is also an Infectious disease HOT clinic.

All referrals can be made by eReferral to the RAS service: General Infectious Diseases / Tropical Medicine RAS - Southmead - RVJ (use Urgent Priority)

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.