UK Health Security Agency Expansion of Disease Reporting Requirements

UK Health Security Agency Expansion of Disease Reporting Requirements

Expansion of Disease Reporting Requirements

From April 6, 2025, UKHSA requires medical professionals to report 8 more diseases, while labs must report 10 new pathogens to boost surveillance.

From:

UK Health Security Agency

Published

18 March 2025

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has expanded the list of notifiable diseases and pathogens that registered medical professionals and diagnostic laboratories in England must report.

The updated Health Protection Notification Regulations (HPNR) requirements, which come into effect from 6 April 2025, will strengthen local and national surveillance and improve outbreak response capabilities for infectious diseases.

Medical professionals will now be required to report 8 additional conditions, including Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and zoonotic influenza strains. Likewise, laboratories processing human samples in England must report ten new causative agents.

These changes are the result of a public consultation and assessment conducted jointly by UKHSA and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to enhance surveillance capabilities for current and emerging infectious diseases.

Aside from existing infections, registered medical professionals will be required to report suspected cases of:

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)

Influenza of zoonotic origin

Chickenpox (varicella)

Congenital syphilis

Neonatal herpes

Acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) or acute flaccid myelitis (AFM)

Disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI)

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)

Diagnostic laboratories testing human samples in England will also be required to report an additional 10 pathogens, including:

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)

Non-human influenza A subtypes

Norovirus

Echinococcus spp

Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV)

Toxoplasma (congenital toxoplasmosis)

Trichinella spp

Yersinia spp

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)

Candidozyma auris

Dr William Welfare, UKHSA Director of Health Protection Operations said:

These expanded reporting requirements will strengthen our ability to detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks quickly and effectively. Robust disease surveillance is vital for effective public health response and the data gathered through this system is crucial for developing and implementing timely public health interventions and protecting communities across England.

When registered medical practitioners report certain diseases, UKHSA’s Health Protection Teams will take action. This might include giving antibiotics to people who’ve been in contact with patients, offering vaccines, or advising people to self-isolate. For other diseases, the reports help UKHSA track how illnesses spread and how effective interventions are.

UKHSA recently introduced an electronic NOIDs system, allowing medical professionals to submit notifications online. This digital system is faster than the old paper-based method, helping UKHSA respond more quickly to health threats and reducing the burden of reporting for healthcare professionals.

All shared information is confidential and protected under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). UKHSA only uses this information to track and prevent the spread of diseases.

Published 18 March 2025

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/expansion-of-mandatory-disease-reporting-requirements

Diagnosis and Reporting of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

Terry S. Singeltary, Sr

Author Affiliations

JAMA. 2001;285(6):733-734. doi:10-1001/pubs.JAMA-ISSN-0098-7484-285-6-jlt0214 

To the Editor: In their Research Letter, Dr Gibbons and colleagues1 reported that the annual US death rate due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has been stable since 1985. These estimates, however, are based only on reported cases, and do not include misdiagnosed or preclinical cases. It seems to me that misdiagnosis alone would drastically change these figures. An unknown number of persons with a diagnosis of Alzheimer disease in fact may have CJD, although only a small number of these patients receive the postmortem examination necessary to make this diagnosis. Furthermore, only a few states have made CJD reportable. Human and animal transmissible spongiform encephalopathies should be reportable nationwide and internationally.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1031186

CJD Annual Report December 14, 2024

https://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2024/12/creutzfeldt-jacob-disease-cjd-bse-cwd.html

Iatrogenic Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy TSE Prion

https://itseprion.blogspot.com/

terry