Western Australian Health Department figures reveal 44% of the 2600 West Australians who returned from overseas with infectious diseases last year had been to Bali.
Almost 4% of infectious diseases in WA tracked by the department last year were contracted in Bali, with dengue fever the most common.
There were almost 270 cases of the potentially fatal mosquito borne disease and almost 500 cases of gastroenteritis caused by salmonella and campylobacter bacteria.
Other infections included more than 120 cases of sexually transmissible infections such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea.
More than 140 West Australians needed a course of precautionary rabies vaccinations after being bitten or scratched by monkeys, dogs or other animals.
Rabbies still remain endemic in dogs in Bali and around 150 Balinese people have died from from the untreatable disease during the last three years.
Other diseases contracted in Bali last year included legionnaires’ disease, measels, typhus, typhoid fever, and hepatitis A and HIV. During the past five years WA’s number of holidaymakers from Perth to Bali has quadrupled.
