Health protection legislation in England has been updated from 6 April 2010 to give public authorities modernised powers and duties to prevent and control risks to human health from infection or contamination, including by chemicals and radiation.

The main features of the legislation are to:

• extend the long-standing requirement on Registered Medical Practitioners (RMPs) to notify the proper officer of a local authority of individual cases of specified infectious diseases (notifiable diseases) by also requiring them to notify cases of other infections or of contamination which they believe present, or could present, a significant risk to human health
• require diagnostic laboratories to notify the Health Protection Agency (HPA) of specified causative agents they identify in tests on human samples
• provide local authorities with wider, more flexible powers to deal with incidents or emergencies where infection or contamination presents, or could present, a significant risk to human health.

Diseases notifiable (to Local Authority Proper Officers) under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010:

• Acute encephalitis
• Acute meningitis
• Acute poliomyelitis
• Acute infectious hepatitis
• Anthrax
• Botulism
• Brucellosis
• Cholera
• Diphtheria
• Enteric fever (typhoid or paratyphoid fever)
• Food poisoning
• Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS)
• Infectious bloody diarrhoea
• Invasive group A streptococcal disease and scarlet fever
• Legionnaires' Disease
• Leprosy
• Malaria
• Measles
• Meningococcal septicaemia
• Mumps
• Plague
• Rabies
• Rubella
• SARS
• Smallpox
• Tetanus
• Tuberculosis
• Typhus
• Viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF)
• Whooping cough
• Yellow fever

The RMP should send a written notification to the proper officer of the local authority so that it is received within three days, beginning with the day on which the RMP forms the clinical suspicion or makes the clinical diagnosis.

However, if the RMP considers the case requires urgent notification, they need to notify it orally - usually by telephone - as soon as reasonably practicable and follow this up with written notification within three days. It is recommended that urgent notifications are made as soon as possible after the RMP forms the clinical suspicion or makes the clinical diagnosis, and always within 24 hours.

A RMP who makes the diagnosis (confirmed or suspected) of a notifiable disease is required to notify the Proper Officer of their local authority (in this case Greater Manchester Health Protection Unit and Trafford Council).

The only circumstances in which notification is not required is when the RMP has reason to believe that a colleague has already notified the case. This is not a voluntary reporting system.

Further information on the notification of infectious diseases and useful fact sheets are available from the Health Protection Agency.