Abstract
Background and aimsPriority setting is a challenging task for public health professionals. To support health professionals with this and in following a recommendation from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO), 35 European parasitologists attended a workshop from 8–12 February 2016 to rank food-borne parasites (FBP) in terms of their importance for Europe and regions within Europe. Methods: Countries were divided into European regions according to those used by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. We used the same multicriteria decision analysis approach as the FAO/WHO, for comparison of results, and a modified version, for better regional representation. Twenty-five FBP were scored in subgroups, using predefined decision rules. Results: At the European level, Echinococcus multilocularis ranked first, followed by Toxoplasma gondii and Trichinella spiralis. At the regional level, E. multilocularis ranked highest in Northern and Eastern Europe, E. granulosus in South-Western and South-Eastern Europe, and T. gondii in Western Europe. Anisakidae, ranking 17th globally, appeared in each European region’s top 10. In contrast, Taenia solium, ranked highest globally but 10th for Europe. Conclusions: FBP of importance in Europe differ from those of importance globally, requiring targeted surveillance systems, intervention measures, and preparedness planning that differ across the world and across Europe.
Highlights
Food-borne parasites (FBP) are increasingly recognised as a cause of health problems in humans [1,2,3]
In September 2012, an expert meeting was organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to use multi-criteria decision analyses (MCDA) for determining the relative global importance of 24 food-borne parasites (FBP), selected from an initial list of 93, with the aim of developing general guidelines for controlling FBP on a global level [4]
This study acted on the FAO/WHO’s 2012 recommendation to repeat their global ranking of FBP on a regional level
Summary
Food-borne parasites (FBP) are increasingly recognised as a cause of health problems in humans [1,2,3]. Various studies have focused on the identification and prioritisation of specific infectious diseases; for example, studies have quantified the global burden of foodborne diseases [5], ranked threats to livestock in the United Kingdom (UK) [7] and Australia [8], and ranked infectious threats to humans in the UK [9], Germany [10] and the Netherlands [11] Such prioritisation studies are based on quantitative models and data that allow direct comparisons, as was done for quantifying the global burden of food-borne disease [5]. To support health professionals with this and in following a recommendation from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO), 35 European parasitologists attended a workshop from 8–12 February 2016 to rank food-borne parasites (FBP) in terms of their importance for Europe and regions within Europe. Conclusions: FBP of importance in Europe differ from those of importance globally, requiring targeted surveillance systems, intervention measures, and preparedness planning that differ across the world and across Europe
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