§ Lord Kilmanyasked Her Majesty's Government:
When the criteria for making a human disease notifiable were last changed and when a change was last made in the criteria for making an animal disease notifiable and what were the circumstances in each case.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur)Responsibility for notification criteria in relation to human and animal diseases is shared by the Department of Health and Social Security, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the other health and agriculture departments.
There are no formal criteria for making a human disease notifiable under the relevant legislation, but the two most important reasons are to enable control measures to be applied to prevent the spread of disease and thus protect the health of the general public; and to enable the incidence of a disease to be studied so as to assess the effectiveness of preventive procedures such as immunisation.
The criteria for deciding whether or not an animal disease should be made notifiable have not changed. A disease may be made notifiable in order to deal with specific cases, or to deal with cases as part of a national control or eradication programme. Essential criteria are that there must be sure methods of diagnosis, clinical signs which may lead the owner to suspect disease, which may be confirmed by laboratory test, or a test which is applied to the animal in life.