Fact sheets
Gastroenteritis fact sheet (PDF 207KB)
Public Health action
Notifiable disease data and reports
Additional sources of information
Exclusion
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 precautions for hospitalised and institutionalised patients.
Case definition
Laboratory criteria
1. Isolation of Yersinia enterocolitica or Yersinia pseudotuberculosis from the patient’s stool or blood culture;
OR
2. A fourfold or greater rise in serum antibody titres between acute and convalescent phase sera;
OR
3. A single elevated antibody titre in a patient with a clinically compatible illness.
Clinical picture
Many cases of yersiniosis occur in children. An acute bacterial enteric disease manifested by watery diarrhoea, enterocolitis, mesenteric lymphadenitis, fever, headache, pharyngitis, anorexia, vomiting and erythema nodosum. Post-infectious arthritis occurs in 50% of adult cases. Iritis, cutaneous ulceration, hepatosplenic abscesses, osteomyelitis and septicaemia can also occur.
