Surveillance of Sexually Transmitted Infections

ESR undertakes STI surveillance on behalf of the Ministry of Health. A number of different surveillance systems are currently in place including:

• notifications of gonorrhoea and syphilis
• laboratory-based surveillance of chlamydia and gonorrhoea
• clinic-based surveillance of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, genital warts, genital herpes, non-specific urethritis (NSU), chancroid, granuloma inguinale (GI), and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV).

Surveillance for AIDS and HIV is undertaken by the AIDS Epidemiology Group.

Notifications

Gonorrhoea

Click here for the link to the Ministry of Health notification case definition for gonorrhoea.

All health practitioners notifying cases of gonorrhoea should complete the web-based questionnaire. The questionnaire can be found here: Gonorrhoea questionnaire.

Syphilis

Click here for the link to the Ministry of Health notification case definition for syphilis. Note that late latent and tertiary syphilis are not notifiable.

The majority of infectious syphilis cases are notified by sexual health clinics who have access to a web-based REDCap database to input their data directly. REDCap instructions for sexual health clinics.

Health practitioners working outside sexual health clinics who diagnose infectious or congenital syphilis cases are required to complete a questionnaire and send it to ESR for entry into REDCap (further instructions are in the form). Please select the appropriate form below.

Case questionnaires:
Syphilis infectious form (Word)
Syphilis infectious PDF
Syphilis congenital fillable form (Word)
Syphilis congenital PDF

AIDS and HIV

Surveillance for AIDS and HIV is undertaken by the AIDS Epidemiology Group, however AIDS cases need to be created in EpiSurv. The form for initial AIDS notifications can be found here:

AIDS initial notification form.

Cases of HIV infection are notified directly by laboratories.

Clinic and laboratory-based surveillance

STI case definitions for clinic-based surveillance (PDF, 87KB)

Each month participating clinics send anonymised data on the age, sex and ethnicity of all cases meeting one or more of the STI surveillance case definitions to ESR. Clinics also provide the total number of clinic attendances.

Likewise, each month participating laboratories across New Zealand send anonymised data on confirmed cases of chlamydia and gonorrhoea by age and sex, to ESR. Laboratories also provide the total number of specimens and/or patients tested.

After checking and cleaning the data, ESR produces clinic and laboratory quarterly reports and an annual report with all data reported during the previous year.

Clinic surveillance forms used in data collection can be downloaded here:

• STI clinic data entry template (XLS, 19KB)
• Instructions on how to complete the case and visit forms (PDF, 74KB)