Fact sheets

Shigellosis fact sheet (PDF 197KB)

Public Health action

• Communicable Disease Guidelines, for teachers, child care workers, local government authorities and medical practitioners. Department of Health, Western Australia

• Therapeutic Guidelines: Antibiotic. Therapeutic Guidelines Limited: Melbourne

• OD 0103/08 Public Health Intervention for Sporadic Enteric Notifications

• OD 0303/10 Guidelines for exclusion of people with enteric infections and their contacts from work, school and child-care settings 
  

Notifiable disease data and reports

• Up-to-date Shigella notification data

• General infectious disease reports 

Additional sources of information

• Control of Communicable Diseases Manual   

Exclusions

In general, people with symptoms of enteric infections should be excluded from work, school, activities involving groups of people (e.g. sports training, group camps) and other situations where disease transmission may occur, until they have been asymptomatic for 24 hours and have normal stools.

However, people who are at high risk of transmitting their infection or work in a high risk setting (i.e. workers in health care, residential care and child care, food handlers, young children in child care, and cases who are faecally incontinent, as shown in the table below) should be excluded until they are asymptomatic for 48 hours and have normal stools.

Enteric precaution for hospitalised or institutionalised patients.

Additional precautions for cases of Shigella dysenteriae who are at high risk of transmitting their infection or work in a high risk setting: exclude until asymptomatic for 48 hours including normal stools and has had two consecutive negative faecal specimens collected at least 24 hours apart.

Case definition

Only confirmed cases should be notified.

Confirmed case

A confirmed case requires laboratory definitive evidence only.

Laboratory definitive evidence

Isolation or detection of Shigella species.