WHO urges South-East Asian nations to make food safety a priority

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged nations in the South-East Asia region to make food safety a priority, as close to 700, 000 children die of diarrhea in the region every year.

WHO has released the statement ahead of World Health Day on 7 April.

The organisation stressed the need for nations to come up with food safety policies matching the legislation, and robust strategies to tackle the threat that’s being aggravated by climate change and its impact on food production, emerging biological and environmental contamination, new technologies, new foodborne infections and diseases and antimicrobial resistance through the food chain.

Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste form WHO’s South-East Asia Region.

WHO South-East Asia regional director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said: "These existing and emerging threats call for urgent action. Countries must put in place comprehensive food safety policies matched by legislation and robust food safety strategies. And they must be stringently implemented across the food chain. This requires a trained workforce and an informed and empowered consumer."

WHO also said that the policies need to be multisectoral, with a preventive approach that should be applied by enhancing farming practices with the use of agro-chemicals or veterinary drugs only as prescribed.

Speaking about the challenges of food safety in today’s world, WHO said that the food chains now travel through long distances and comprise multiple steps between production and consumption. Such a process poses the risk of contamination of a product of one country spreading to another.

The organisation stated that it supported countries that followed Codex Alimentarius, a collection of international food standards, guidelines and codes of practice for food production and food safety.

Food safety is one of the key focus areas under the International Health Regulations – IHR 2005 – which includes events of all public health emergencies of international concern that involve contaminated food and outbreaks of foodborne diseases.