[Notifiable and non-notifiable infectious diseases in the federal republic of germany (author's transl)].

Owing to the growing density of population, urbanization, and the use of all kinds of publicly accessible facilities, the interruption of the infection chain for air-borne diseases proves particularly inadequate if no efficient prophylactic inoculations are available to combat viral infections or if no efficient chemotherapeutical measures can be adopted against bacterial infections. Equally problematic is the struggle against salmonellosis associated with the mechanized mass production and distribution of foodstuffs as well as the forms of infectious hospitalism, especially hepatitis B, which are favoured by the technical advances in the medical field. Venereal diseases prove highly resistant because the human patterns of sexual behaviour are difficult to influence. Thus the infectious diseases caused by deficient hygiene have virtually disappeared in our country, while those diseases survive or occur which are capable of profiting from the sociological changes and the technical progress of civilisation. On the whole, the mortality rate has drastically dropped while morbidity has remained more or less the same (with, however, a change in the spectrum of the infectious diseases); this is due mainly to mass inoculation and specific therapy.