17 March 2023
Anna
[FYI request #21791 email]
Tēnā koe Anna
Official information request HNZ00011571
Thank you for your email on 16 February 2023, asking for the following which has been
considered under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act).
““May I please have the numbers of New Zealanders diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease, or other spongiform encephalopathies for the following years? 2017 2018 2019
2020 2021 2022 2023 (if any data is available so far)”.
On 20 February 2023, you confirmed that you were happy to refine your request to the below:
“May I please have the numbers of New Zealanders hospitalised for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
FOR EACH YEAR from 2017 – 2023”.
Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand does not hold national level data on the numbers of people
diagnosed with CJD in New Zealand. We hold information on the numbers of hospitalisations with
this diagnosis. This would not include people who had CJD, but did not require treatment for the
condition in a hospital.
The 2021/2022 financial year is the latest year for which complete national level hospital events
data is available. We have therefore provided data on hospitalisations from 2016/17 to 2021/22.
Table 1: The number of New Zealanders hospitalised for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) for each
financial year from 2016/17-2021/22
Financial years
Discharges
2016/17
4
2017/18
18
2018/19
8
2019/20
6
2020/21
4
2021/22
5
Please note, people hospitalised multiple times (transfers, readmissions, and multiple incidents)
are also counted each time. As provided to you on 20 February 2023, the University of Otago’s Department of Medicine
maintains a CJD registry that is also available from
https://www.otago.ac.nz/cjd-registry/index.html
How to get in contact
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Te Whatu Ora may
proactively release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name
and contact details, wil be removed prior to release. The released response wil be made available
on our website.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Gaynor Bradfield
Manager
Office of the Chief Data and Digital
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Te Whatu Ora, PO Box 793,
Wel ington 6140, New Zealand
