This week, there has been a lot of post regarding the World Health Day 2015. I promise today will be the last day we discuss it (the week is over…hooray for Friday!). In an article published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying that the arm caused by foodborne illnesses underscore the global threats posed by unsafe foods, and the need for coordinated, cross-border action across the entire food supply chain.
The main issue WHO sees in the current food production process is that it is industrialised and its distribution has become global. This complicates ways to analyse the production of food and introduces multiple new opportunities for food to become contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemicals.
WHO has recently released their broad analysis on the global burden of foodborne diseases. The full results of this research, being undertaken by WHO’s Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG), are expected to be released in October 2015. The important figures are as listed;
- there were an estimated 582 million cases of 22 different foodborne enteric diseases and 351,000 associated deaths;
- the enteric disease agents responsible for most deaths were Salmonella Typhi (52 000 deaths), enteropathogenic E. coli (37 000) and norovirus (35 000);
- the African region recorded the highest disease burden for enteric foodborne disease, followed by South-East Asia;
- over 40% of people suffering from enteric diseases caused by contaminated food were children aged under 5 years.
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