Below are charts showing patients notified to NSW Health with a particular communicable disease. The infectious disease is only notified by laboratories when they find that a person tests positive to this condition. The first graph shows the number of notifications by month from January 2011 to August 2015. The second graph shows the age and gender of patients notified in the last year. The infection was quite common in children in NSW until the last few decades, occurs in outbreaks from time to time, causes relatively mild disease in most adults and children, but birth defects when pregnant women are infected. It is only notifiable by laboratories in NSW.
What is the disease?
Answer
Despite the disease being common in children in decades past, the first graph shows that few cases are reported each month in NSW. The second graph suggests that infection typically occurs in working age adults, rather than children.
The disease is rubella.
