Abstract
Illness and death from diseases caused by unsafe food are a constant threat to public health security as well as socio-economic development throughout the world. The full extent of the burden and cost of foodborne diseases associated with pathogenic bacterial, viral and parasitic microorganisms, and food contaminated by chemicals is still unknown but is thought to be substantial. The World Health Organization (WHO) Initiative to estimate the global burden of foodborne diseases aims to fill the current data gap and respond to the increasing global interest in health information. Collaborative efforts are required to achieve the ambitious task of assessing the foodborne disease burden from all causes worldwide. Recognising the need to join forces, the WHO Initiative has assembled an alliance of stakeholders which share and support the Initiative's vision, intended objectives and outcomes. One important collaborator is the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) which has embarked on a burden of disease study covering at least 18 foodborne diseases in nearly 30 countries.
Highlights
Using the burden of disease methodology enables public health officials to circumvent some of the problems posed by the difficulty to report properly the incidence of foodborne diseases
There are few surveillance systems which capture and attribute human illness due to infections following the ingestion of specific foods or sequelae that may be associated with foodborne infections, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome following campylobacteriosis, or epilepsy associated with neurocysticercosis following infection with the parasite Taenia solium
This trend is compounded by the growing industrialisation of food and feed production as well as intensive farming which catalyses the appearance and spread of pathogens (e.g. prions associated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) leading to new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans during the 1990s which was caused by the use of meat and bone meal in the production of animal feeds [11])
Summary
Using the burden of disease methodology enables public health officials to circumvent some of the problems posed by the difficulty to report properly the incidence of foodborne diseases. Burden of foodborne diseases All countries have limited resources with which to address the health needs of their populations. Why estimate the global burden of foodborne diseases?
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