Of all the Waterloo Region residents who came into contact with reportable infectious diseases in 2012, nearly half were diagnosed with chlamydia.

Chlamydia accounted for 1,048 of the 2,541 reported infectious diseases in the region that year.

Factor in between 100 and 400 cases apiece of influenza, campylobacteriosis, salmonella and hepatitis C, and five diseases accounted for nearly 80 per cent of infectious disease in the region in 2012.

“There are some areas where, as a community, we can do a little better in terms of prevention efforts,” says Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region’s associate medical officer of health.

In general, rates of infectious diseases in Waterloo Region were at or below Ontario averages, although there were exceptions – including giardiasis (otherwise known as beaver fever) and invasive pneumococcal disease (pneumonia and similar diseases).

Wang notes that there is a vaccine available for invasive pneumococcal disease, which is more likely to affect people over the age of 65 with underlying medical conditions.

“Not everybody who is eligible is getting the vaccine,” she says.

More than half of the chlamydia cases in Waterloo Region in 2010 involved residents between the ages of 15 and 24, with more than two-thirds of those cases involving females.

Nearly 400 cases of influenza were tracked in the report, with 13 of them proving fatal.

The region tracked a total of 39 infectious diseases in 2012, with at least one case of all but six reported to the health unit.