The ethnic group of the case prioritised in the following order: Māori, Pacific peoples, Asian, Middle Eastern/Latin American/African (MELAA) and European or Other (including New Zealander) ethnic groups.
Please note only acute cases of Hepatitis B and C are notifiable.
Not every case of acute gastroenteritis is necessarily notifiable, only those where there is a suspected common source or from a person in a high risk category (for example, a food handler, an early childhood service worker) or single cases of chemical, bacterial, or toxic food poisoning such as botulism or toxic shellfish poisoning.
Exclusions
Notifiable disease data collected and reported by agencies other than ESR is not presented in this dataset i.e., acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other spongiform encephalopathies, lead absorption equal to or in excess of 0.48 µmol/L, and poisoning arising from chemical contamination of the environment.
The main purpose of surveillance is to provide information for action. Information provided by regular surveillance reports enables effective monitoring of rates and distribution of disease, detection of outbreaks, monitoring of interventions, and predicting emerging hazards.