In 1983, a group of internationally renowned experts convened jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that “illness due to contaminated food was perhaps the most widespread health problem in the contemporary world,” and “an important cause of reduced economic productivity.” In 1992, the FAO/WHO-sponsored International Conference on Nutrition recognized that hundreds of millions of people suffer from communicable diseases caused by contaminated food and drinking water. The Conference declared that “access to nutritionally adequate and safe food is a right of each individual.” In the same year, the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development recognized that food was a major vehicle for the transmission of environmental contaminants — both chemical and biological — to human populations throughout the world and urged countries to take measures to prevent or minimise these threats. In 2000, the World Health Assembly, the supreme governing body of WHO, adopted unanimously a resolution recognising food safety as an essential public health function.
A wide range of biological and chemical agents, or hazards, causes food-borne diseases with varying degrees of severity, ranging from mild indisposition to chronic or life-threatening illness, or both.These agents include bacteria, viruses, protozoa, helminthes, and natural toxins, as well as chemical and environmental contaminants. In addition to the increase in the prevalence of food-borne illness shown through epidemiological surveillance during the last three decades, devastating outbreaks of diseases such as salmonellosis, cholera, enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia (E.) coli infections, and hepatitis A have occurred in both developed and developing countries. Furthermore, cholera and other diarrheal diseases, particularly infant diarrhea, which were traditionally considered to be spread by water or through person-to-person contact, were shown to be largely food-borne.
This brief reviews the incidence and health consequences of biological pathogens in developing countries, as these are the most important food safety risks in those parts of the world, and provides an overview of possible methods of control.
