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Public health advice
We provide clear and timely evidence-informed public health advice to support Australian Government and state or territory government decisions.
This includes working with state and territory governments to inform responses to disease outbreaks.
We publish this advice on our website to ensure full transparency.
Awareness and education
We educate people with information on:
Strategies and frameworks
We develop and implement national strategies and frameworks to guide the way we prevent, detect and respond to communicable diseases and tackle antimicrobial resistance.
See our national strategies and frameworks.
Disease surveillance and reporting
We monitor communicable diseases to help us, and the states and territories, to understand disease patterns and identify and respond to outbreaks.
We analyse data and report on the diseases we monitor through various channels.
Find out more about our national disease surveillance and reporting work.
Supporting health professionals and public health units
We support health professionals and public health units in managing nationally notifiable diseases with guidelines and case definitions.
We support the Communicable Diseases Network Australia to develop and publish:
- surveillance case definitions to help health professionals decide whether to notify authorities of a case
- national guidelines to help public health units respond to notifiable diseases using best practice.
We support the Public Health Laboratory Network to develop and publish laboratory case definitions to help laboratory professionals:
- determine whether a disease agent is present in a sample
- undertake laboratory-based notifications to public health authorities.
We also support other government agencies to keep Australians secure.
Public health programs
We implement targeted public health programs to address certain communicable diseases, including sexually transmissible infections and bloodborne viruses.
One Health
We take a One Health approach to managing communicable diseases in Australia.
This recognises that human, animal and environmental health are all connected – the health of one affects all.
Biosecurity risk assessments
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is responsible for biosecurity import risk analyses (BIRAs) under the Biosecurity Act 2015. Our Director-General provides a human biosecurity impact statement, if requested.
Our responsibility is to assess whether importing certain goods is safe for human health.
These could be animal, plant, or biological goods, which could include communicable or infectious disease agents including of listed human diseases.
We assess the risks and can set conditions for import to reduce the risk to an acceptable level of protection. These might vary depending on the state or territory where the goods are entering Australia.
Regulation of Security Sensitive Biological Agents
Some communicable disease agents or their toxins could be used as biological weapons.
If someone deliberately released harmful agents, they could significantly affect humans, our environment or our economy.
We regulate these agents under the Security Sensitive Biological Agents Regulatory Scheme.
Legislation
There are both national and state laws about communicable diseases.
We have responsibilities under the Biosecurity Act 2015 to do with:
- assessing the human health risk of importing certain goods into Australia
- determining which diseases are listed human diseases.
The National Health Security Act 2007 underpins:
- our disease surveillance and reporting activities
- the National Notifiable Disease List
- the Security Sensitive Biological Agents Regulatory Scheme.
Who we work with
We work with other agencies in Australia and across the world, including the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
This gives us access to experts in the field so we can provide high-quality, evidence-informed public health advice.
Committees
We work with expert groups and committees to prevent and address communicable diseases and develop evidence-informed advice on communicable diseases.
They include the:
- Australian (Counter) Bioterrorism Laboratory Network (ABLN)
- Australian Health Protection Committee (AHPC)
- Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections Standing Committee (BBVSS)
- Climate and Health Expert Advisory Group (CHEAG)
- Communicable Diseases Network Australia (CDNA)
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) Incident Panel
- Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth)
- Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Taskforce
- Public Health Laboratory Network (PHLN)
- National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Protection (NATSIHP) subcommittee of the AHPC
- National Arbovirus and Malaria Advisory Committee (NAMAC)
- National Blood Borne Virus and Sexually Transmissible Infections Surveillance Subcommittee (NBBVSTI SSC)
- National Health Emergency Management Sub-committee (NHEMS)
- National Immunisation Committee (NIC)
- National Respiratory Infections Surveillance Committee (NRISC)
- National Tuberculosis Advisory Committee (NTAC)
- National Certification Committee (polio)
- Polio Expert Panel (PEP).
International engagement
As a WHO member, Australia agrees to collect data on, report about and respond to communicable diseases.
The International Health Regulations (2005) require members to monitor for and respond to diseases. This helps the international community respond to health emergencies that can cross borders.
We implement the International Health Regulations through the:
Learn more about the international health regulations.