The Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1988

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations consolidate with amendments the provisions of the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1968.

Cholera, plague, relapsing fever, smallpox and typhus are defined as notifiable diseases by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, and all the sections relating to the prevention and notification of disease in that Act apply to them automatically. These Regulations:—

(a) apply specific sections of the 1984 Act to the diseases listed below;

(b) prescribe the duties of local authorities, port health authorities, and their proper officers with respect to notifications and to returns and reports of disease; and

(c) authorise certain measures for preventing the spread of disease.

The diseases for which provision is made by these Regulations are:—

• Acquired immune deficiency syndrome

• Acute encephalitis

• Acute poliomyelitis

• Anthrax

• Diphtheria

• Dysentery (amoebic or bacillary)

• Leprosy

• Leptospirosis

• Malaria

• Measles

• Meningitis

• Meningococcal septicaemia (without meningitis)

• Mumps

• Ophthalmia neonatorum

• Paratyphoid fever

• Rabies

• Rubella

• Scarlet fever

• Tetanus

• Tuberculosis

• Typhoid fever

• Viral haemorrhagic fever

• Viral hepatitis

• Whooping cough

• Yellow fever

The principal changes from the earlier regulations are:—

(i) that meningococcal septicaemia (without meningitis) is made a notifiable disease (the same provisions of the 1984 Act being applied to it as are applied to acute encephalitis, acute poliomyelitis and meningitis), and

(ii) that mumps and rubella are made notifiable diseases (the same provisions of the 1984 Act being applied to them as are applied to leptospirosis, measles and whooping cough).

In effecting the consolidation references to Lassa fever and Marburg disease have been removed, these diseases now being included in the general term “viral haemorrhagic fever” (which is defined to include these diseases and a number of other viral haemorrhagic fevers), and the reference to infective jaundice has been replaced by a reference to “viral hepatitis”.