Symposium to discuss results on estimates of global burden of foodborne diseases

Testing milk in Kenya’s informal market (photo credit: ILRI/Dave Elsworth).

Illness and death from diseases caused by contaminated food are a constant threat to public health and a significant impediment to socioeconomic development worldwide.

To help address the lack of data on the global extent of this problem, the World Health Organization established the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) to generate the first ever estimates of the global burden of foodborne disease.

The group published its results in December 2015 in a series of scientific articles in PLOS Collections and a report titled WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases.

They include estimates of the burden of foodborne diseases caused by 31 bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemicals.

The results will be presented and discussed at a FERG symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 15-16 December 2015.

Countries will be able to use these estimates to inform national policy development aimed at improving food safety and public health throughout the food chain.

 

New learning resource provides key evidence on food safety in developing countries

A woman milks one of her goats in Ségou District, Mali (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

Livelihoods advisers and other interested development professionals can now benefit from a new learning resource on food safety in developing countries. It was written by Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and published by Evidence on Demand, an international development information hub supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

The learning resource, Food safety in developing countries: An overview, aims to provide ‘non-food safety experts’ with a good understanding of foodborne disease within the broader context of ‘development’ discussions. It assumes that readers already have a solid grasp of international development contexts, and current development discourse.

It is presented in three main sections:

Part 1 will help readers to understand what is meant by foodborne disease and its impact. It summarises current best evidence and knowledge gaps on foodborne disease in developing countries.

Part 2 summarises some of the interventions for managing food safety and stimulates thinking about the ‘so what’ questions. It shows that foodborne disease is preventable.

Part 3 covers food trends and drivers that affect food safety in developing countries in more detail. It also reviews the geography of food safety and how this impacts on people who are poor, and looks at what food safety means for small farmers, export industries, women, the most vulnerable people, and for nutrition.

The conclusions presented at the end capture what the current best evidence is telling us:

• Food safety has been neglected in developing countries. There is growing evidence that foodborne disease may be an important contributor to gastrointestinal disease.
• Foodborne disease has been increasing in developed countries and is likely to increase in developing countries.
• Foodborne disease is not just a health issue. Already a major determinant of export market access, it is increasingly affecting domestic markets.