Boorloo (Perth) Public Health Unit
The Boorloo (Perth) Public Health Unit (Boorloo PHU) works to protect the population by managing infectious disease risk in the Perth metropolitan area. This includes monitoring disease trends, advising health care providers who diagnose disease and following-up close contacts to reduce spread in the community.
Boorloo PHU is a metropolitan wide service that works collaboratively with immunisation service providers and other stakeholders to deliver WA immunisation programs.
Established in July 2016, the service was formerly known as Metropolitan Communicable Disease Control (MCDC), the unit was renamed in 2024 using the Noongar meaning for the geographic area, Boorloo (Perth).
The service is part of the North Metropolitan Health Service (NMHS) and provides disease control services for North, East and South Metropolitan Health Services.
Boorloo PHU is made up of five teams:
Aboriginal health team – ensures culturally appropriate service delivery for Aboriginal clients, including support for case interviews and contact tracing, offsite visits to support testing and treatment and immunisation support through the suite of Moorditj projects.
Disease control team – provides expert and timely public health responses to notifiable disease threats in the Perth metropolitan area, managing cases, contacts, and outbreak situations as they arise.
Immunisation team – delivers projects to improve immunisation coverage across WA, including Aboriginal childhood immunisation and provides advice to health care workers and other stakeholders.
Public health intelligence – provides technical expertise to support disease control and immunisation functions, including database development and management, automation of workflows, surveillance and data analysis.
Syphilis response team – provides case management to control the syphilis outbreak in the Perth metropolitan area, focusing on high-risk groups such as pregnant women, women of childbearing age, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those experiencing homelessness.
