WHO: The Danger of Unsafe Food – By Arnold A. Alalibo

Posted by admin Arnold Alalibo, Articles, Columnists, NNP Columnists, United Nations Friday, April 24th, 2015

By Arnold A. Alalibo | NNP | April 24, 2015 – In 1948, the World Health Organisation, WHO, held its first World Health Assembly where it was decided that 7th April of every year would mark the celebration of World Health Day, WHD. Since then the date has been set aside to mark WHD globally.

This year’s event held yesterday. Besides serving as global health awareness day, WHD is also held to mark the founding of WHO and it is seen as an opportunity to draw global attention to a subject of major importance to world health each year.

Since its inception, WHD has been widely acknowledged and observed by various governments and non-governmental organisations worldwide. Each year the event holds, these bodies also organise activities and highlight their support through media reports and press releases.

The theme for this year’s campaign is: ‘Food Safety’. This theme was chosen to sensitise people on the danger of unsafe food which contains dangerous and harmful substances. Unsafe food is responsible for about 200 diseases and causes an annual death rate of over 2 million people, predominantly children.
Given the health challenges posed to food safety system, WHO is partnering with countries and partners to prevent and respond to the outbreak of food borne disease caused by changes in food production, distribution and consumption.
As food supply is gradually globalized, there is need to strengthen food safety systems among nations. That is why WHO is promoting efforts to improve food safety from farm to plate. Food safety is a collective responsibility so we ought to walk along the food production chain – from farmers to vendors and finally to consumers.

No one can dispute the significance of WHD. In fact, the decision to have a day dedicated to world health is important because it serves as an opportunity to inform people working in different sectors about the importance of safety and the role each person can play in ensuring safety of our food. Therefore consumers and food handlers alike are reminded about the importance of practising food safety because it is an issue that can escalate, if improperly handled, from a local problem to an international emergency since the world has been globalized.

Consumers are also being reminded that the public plays an important role in promoting food safety through public awareness campaigns. This has become imperative given the fact that Africa records the highest cases of food poisoning across the globe followed by South East Asia.

All activities must be geared towards ensuring the quality and safety in the presentation of food at every stage from production through processing and storage to marketing and consumption. This will lead to improved health of the people, reduce food spoilage and losses as well as enhance economic development of a nation.

Every country needs effective food control programme to guarantee the safety of food supply, ensure their quality and availability. This will ensure an acceptable health status for the people.

Many health problems encountered in Nigeria today arise from the consumption of unsafe food. That is why the federal government recently inaugurated the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Food Safety, IMCFS, and the National Food Safety Management Committee, NFSMC, to tackle the menace of food-borne diseases in the country.At the inauguration, the Minister of State for Health and the Supervising Minister of Health, Khaliru Alhassan, said:

“With the dangers that expired food products bring, the Food Safety Policy is important for healthy food reaching people’s homes. Nigeria will benefit from this policy through a drastic reduction of food-poisoning and food-borne diseases. The policy will also increase our foreign revenues as we will be able to meet international trade requirements. Continuing, the minister said:

“A man is what he eats and a healthy nation would be judged by the safety of its food consumption.” He said the contribution of the stakeholders in the review of the policy made it acceptable and comparable with the international standards.

“Nigeria has a lot of ground to cover before getting to envisaged land where it will benefit fully from this policy. These benefits, briefly stated, include the curbing and drastic reduction of the incidences of food poisoning or food-borne illness in Nigeria”, he said. “The long term benefit of it will be the increase of our foreign exchange earnings for the country through export of well packaged food items”, Al-Hassan concluded.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, UNIDO’s Country Representative, Dr. Patrick Kormawa, said at the occasion that the importance of food safety would be highlighted as public health and trade issue. “A healthy population translates to a vibrant and efficient work force able to achieve sustainable production outcomes for businesses in the food sector. This would translate into economic and industrial benefits for Nigeria”, Kormawa said
He further highlighted the objectives of the Food Safety Policy and said it had been aligned with NQI Project activities through “capacity building, mitigating the prevalence of foods identified as ‘high risk’ in Nigeria, and the design of new food exports and manufacturing precedures for food products for the economic benefit of the government and people of Nigeria.”

Nigeria has been grappling with the problem of food-borne diseases with their attendant social, economic and health consequences. The most vulnerable include children who usually fall under five, pregnant women, the aged and those with compromised immune system.

As the world celebrates this year’s World Health Day, the Nigerian authorities have to ensure healthy consumption of food in wholesome form so as to facilitate digestion and easy excretion. Also, the government has to insure that food that is consumed in the country promotes good health and not constitute any form of health hazards.wp_posts