Notifiable diseases
Physicians in Iceland are under obligation to report certain important communicable diseases to the health authorities, who regularly publish statistics on their incidence and prevalence. Statutory notifiable diseases are of two different types, those that are reported with full patient identity and those subject to summary notifications without such identity.
The first category of notifications must include the name or other personal identification of the infected person. The objective of this type of notification is primarily to prevent the propagation of specific infectious diseases through targeted counter measures, such as treating infected patients and/or tracing the origin of the infection concerned.
The second category puts physicians under obligation to keep records of the incidence of certain communicable diseases in their practice and give monthly reports on these to the State Epidemiologist. These notifications provide total numbers only, without any identifiable personal data, for the purpose of providing an epidemiological overview of major communicable diseases in the country, and registering instances of diseases foreign to Iceland, such as malaria. The two categories of diseases overlap to a certain degree.
I. Notifiable communicable diseases. Number of identified cases, by year
For English, please click worksheet 2 of the Excel table on the linked page.
II. Reported cases of communicable diseases, total numbers without patient identity, by month and year
13 January 2011