Introduction

Notifiable diseases are those listed by the Department of Health for which reporting is compulsory in terms of the Health Act of 1997 and other relevant legislation. The purposes of the reporting system are firstly to control disease and secondly to monitoring trends of these diseases. Health personnel are therefore obliged to report such cases to the relevant health department and although there are currently 44 notifiable medical conditions, this indicator will only address four of these, namely tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid and malaria.

Assessment of Data

The Health Systems Trust indicated that second to KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga had the highest number of malaria cases reported in 1997, but these appear to have declined from 2000 to 2001, although this could be due to under-reporting leading to incomplete figures. While Mpumalanga has had the highest number of typhoid cases in the country over the last few years (HST, 1999), it is evident that very few typhoid cases are reported. Tuberculosis is already a problem within the province and is reported to be responsible for 8% of deaths (in both males and females) in South Africa for the period between 1997 and 2001. Cholera is a disease that appears infrequently and is often associated with periods of flooding. The number of reported cases for the four notifiable diseases in South Africa from 1999 to 2001 is presented below.