The following document is intended to be a resource for communicable disease outbreaks, especially regarding appropriate specimens for laboratory testing. In most cases, when an outbreak of any communicable disease is suspected, the relevant local or provincial health authority and/or the National Department of Health must be notified as soon as possible. For further advice on the laboratory investigation of outbreaks, contact the relevant NICD Unit. Contact numbers and case definitions for outbreaks are listed at the end of the tables. For certain outbreaks, the primary laboratory investigation is carried out at the local/regional NHLS laboratory,and then the isolate is referred to the NICD reference laboratory. You can download the Outbreak_manual here as a .pdf file, using right-click "save as..." for IE and right-click "Save link as..." for Mozilla Firefox.