NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
FOR WRITTEN REPLY
QUESTION NO. 2076
DATE OF PUBLICATION IN INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER: 02 NOVEMBER 2009
(INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER NO. 26)
Mr M Waters (DA) to ask the Minister of Health:
Whether his department has investigated the possibility of declaring foetal
alcohol syndrome as a notifiable disease; if not, why not; if so, what are
the relevant details?
NW2730E
REPLY:
The Department has observed an increasing trend in relation to foetal
alcohol syndrome especially in the Western Cape Province and other
provinces. The step that the Department is considering is to calculate the
attributable risk and threshold levels (i.e. if the numbers of cases exceed
an agreed level per 100 000 population) in order to come to a
scientifically informed decision to make Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and
âNotifiableâ or âReportableâ condition, as is it was the case with Maternal
Mortality.
(a) At the present this particular medical condition (Foetal Alcohol
Syndrome) does not conform to being a Notifiable Medical Condition.
(b) The standard criteria used to make medical condition or health event
Notifiable are:
1. Its potential to cause an outbreak or epidemic-prone
characteristics that can cause a national or international
public health emergency;
2. The Notifiable Medical Condition causative agent has a potential
for human to human spread, in case of virulent viruses or
bacteria may mutate and become an drug resistance;
3. The pathogens usually have a very high transmission potential
(air-borne e.g. TB, VHF, pneumonia plague etc); a high fatality
rate in a short incubation period (e.g. Cholera, SARS, H5NI,
VHF, Rabies) and my lead to a unacceptable high mortality rate
(e.g. AIDS) of public significance; there may also be no
available effective treatment available for those affected;
4. The emergency may be declared Notifiable by WHO according to the
International Health Regulations where the disease could pose an
international public health emergency.
END.