Enteric infections

Disease pages

Fact sheets

• Gastroenteritis (Healthy WA)
• Giardia (Healthy WA)
• Norovirus (Healthy WA)

Notification pages and links to fact sheets

• Botulism (Healthy WA)
• Campylobacter (Healthy WA)
• Cholera (Healthy WA)
• Cryptosporidium (Healthy WA)
• Hepatitis A (Healthy WA)
• HUS (Healthy WA)
• Listeria (Healthy WA)
• Paratyphoid fever (Healthy WA)
• Rotavirus (Healthy WA)
• Salmonella (Healthy WA)
• Shiga/Verotoxin producing E.coli (STEC/VTEC) (Healthy WA)
• Shigella (Healthy WA)
• Typhoid (Healthy WA)
• Vibrio parahaemolyticus (Healthy WA)
• Yersinia (Healthy WA)

Public health action

Sporadic cases

• Communicable Disease Guidelines, for teachers, childcare workers, local government authorities and medical practitioners. Department of Health, Western Australia (PDF 1MB)
• OD 0490/14 Public Health Follow-up of Sporadic Enteric Disease Notifications
• OD 0645/16 Guidelines for exclusion of people with enteric infections and their contacts from work, school and child-care settings
• Australian Immunisation Handbook, 10th edition (external link)

Disease clusters or outbreaks

• Report gastroenteritis clusters or outbreaks (2 or more linked cases) to your Population Health Unit (Healthy WA)
• Western Australian guidelines and reporting forms for the management of outbreaks of gastroenteritis in residential care facilities
• Western Australian reporting and forms for the management of outbreaks of gastroenteritis in childcare centres and schools.

Additional sources of information

• For disease-specific information search for the disease in Notification of infectious diseases and related conditions.
• WA infectious disease data

Exclusion

In general, people who are still feeling ill from gastroenteritis should not go to work, school, or activities involving groups of people until symptoms have stopped for 24 hours and have normal stools. However, people who are at high risk of spreading their infection or work in a high risk setting (i.e. workers in health care, residential care and child care, food handlers, young children in child care, and cases who are faecally incontinent) should not go to work or childcare until symptoms have stopped for 48 hours and have normal stools.

Practice enteric precautions for hospitalised or institutionalised patients.

Additional precautions and clearance specimens are required for cases and/or contacts of cholera, S. dysenteriae, hepatitis A, paratyphoid, STEC/VTEC and typhoid, refer to OD 0645/16 Guidelines for exclusion of people with enteric infections and their contacts from work, school and child-care settings.