A health network to enhance the surveillance of foodborne diseases in Australia
News
- OzFoodNet held an 'Advanced Foodborne Disease Outbreak Investigation Workshop' in Newcastle during March 2007. Expert faculty presenting at the meeting included: Dr Andrea Ellis from the Foodborne, Waterborne and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Division at the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the late Professor Aileen Plant from the Australian Biosecurity CRC for Emerging Infectious Diseases. The workshop was very successful and will help Australia respond to foodborne disease outbreaks.
- OzFoodNet epidemiologists contributed to and participated in the recent WHO Global Salm-Surv Workshop on Foodborne Disease Surveillance held at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, in January 2007.
- Information on outbreaks resulting from contaminated food can be accessed through the OzFoodNet Outbreak Register. Currently, the Register has data on the major causes of foodborne disease outbreaks for 2001 to June 2006. Data can be extracted by implicated food, setting where the food was prepared, and causative agent.
- The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing has published an OzFoodNet report Estimating the incidence of foodborne illness in Australia (PDF 211 KB) . The report dcoumented that annually 5.4 million cases of foodborne illness occurred in Australia, with a credible interval of 4 to 6.9 million cases. Contaminated food causes approximately 18,000 hospitalisations and 120 deaths every year. The majority of foodborne illness is due to gastroenteritis, which causes 2.1 million lost days off work, 1.2 million people to visit a doctor, and 300,000 prescriptions for antibiotics. The study was also published in the international journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
- OzFoodNet routinely use NetEpi (a web-based database) to investigate multistate outbreaks of foodborne illness. NetEpi was developed by the Epidemiology Branch of the New South Wales Department of Health to facilitate data collection from remote sites. The database was used during a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella Hvittingfoss, to capture hypothesis generating information along with results from a case control study. It is expected that the use of web-based databases will become routine for investigation of outbreaks in the future. OzFoodNet, in conjunction with CDNA and PHLN members, are currently drafting national guidelines for managing multi-jurisdictional outbreaks of foodborne illness.
Health Department sites participating in OzFoodNet
Australian Capital Territory | New South Wales | Northern Territory | Queensland | South Australia | Tasmania | Victoria | Western Australia
Page currency, Latest update: 30 July, 2007