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According to the WHO, more than 200 diseases come from eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites and more. It’s a growing public health problem that puts a strain on healthcare systems, drives lost productivity, and harms tourism and trade as well as making people ill and sometimes even killing them.
How do food-borne diseases happen?
Food-borne diseases are caused by contaminated food at every point along the food production, delivery and consumption chain, mostly arising through unsafe food storage and food processing. These illnesses can transmit everything from diarrhoea to some cancers.
Most of the time they’re gastrointestinal but they can be neurological, gynaecological and immunological. And those who suffer the most from food-borne diarrhoea, wherever you are in the world, are the under fives.
How many people get ill and die through unsafe food?
Unsafe food causes 600 million cases of disease and 420,000 deaths a year. 30% of deaths are children under 5. The WHO says 33 million years of healthy life are lost to unsafe food every year, but they also say the real number is probably a lot bigger.
Food-borne diseases are preventable. Strong and resilient national food safety systems are achievable. But because food safety gets so little political attention, especially in developing countries, it’s an ongoing challenge. As a result contaminated food by microbial agents is a worldwide public health worry. When you realise that many countries have documented significant increases in diseases caused by microorganisms in food over the last few decades, you understand what a big – and growing – issue food safety is.
Common microbial hazards in food include bacteria like Salmonella, viruses like Norovirus, and parasites like trematodes. The diarrhoeal diseases they cause are the most common food-borne illnesses of all, resulting from eating contaminated food, causing millions of us to fall ill and hundreds of thousands of us to die every year. There’s more. Because these diseases can cause malnutrition and stunt people’s growth, entire lives are affected.
World Food Safety Day – 7th June 2023
The WHO’s World Food Safety Day on 7th June 2023 aims to spread the news about how to prevent and control food-borne diseases. Take a look at this video about the event – then
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