Morbidity Analysis of the Notifiable Infectious Diseases in China, 2018

Dong, Shuaibing; Ren, Xiang; Zhang, Cuihong; Geng, Mengjie; Zhu, Yuliang; Shi, Lusha; Zhang, Lijie; Li, Zhongjie; Wang, Liping

What is already known about this topic? Annual morbidity analysis reports that summarized trends and changing epidemiology for notifiable diseases were published in 2013 and 2015 (1,2). What is added by this report? In 2018, the morbidity of national notifiable diseases was 559.41 per 100,000 population, an increase of 12.88% compared with the average rate between 2015–2017. The five notifiable diseases with the highest reported morbidity were hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), infectious diarrhea, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, and influenza. The five regions with the highest reported morbidity of infectious diseases were Zhejiang Province, Guangxi Autonomous Region, Guangdong Province, Beijing Municipality, and Xinjiang Autonomous Region. What are the implications for public health practice? Evidence on notifiable disease morbidity trends and changing epidemiology should help disease control and prevention agencies and medical institutions direct their response and prevention efforts. In addition, this report demonstrates the continued need for surveillance systems and high-quality data to identify focal points for disease control.