notifiable disease

{
  "id": "MLC-T-ENV-019143",
  "term": "notifiable disease",
  "field": "Environment",
  "definition": "1. Diseases, usually of an infectious nature, whose occurrence is required by law to be made known to a health officer or local government authority. [CancerWeb 2005]\n\n2. A disease that, by statutory requirements, must be reported to the public health authority in the pertinent jurisdiction when the diagnosis is made. A disease deemed of sufficient importance to the public health to require that its occurrence be reported health authorities. The reporting to public health authorities of communicable diseases is, unfortunately, very incomplete. The reasons for this include diagnostic inexactitude, the desire of patients and physicians to conceal the occurrence of conditions carrying a social stigma, and the indifference of physicians to the usefulness of information about such diseases as hepatitis, influenza, and measles. Notifications provide the starting point for investigations into the failure of preventive measures, such immunizations, for tracing sources of infection, for finding common vehicles of infection, for describing the geographic clustering of infection, and for various other purposes, depending upon the particular disease. [MERREA 2005]",
  "references": [
    "Thesaurus of Terms Used in Microbial Risk Assessment"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/environment/notifiable-disease/"
}