Food safety: Global call to reduce antimicrobial use in healthy animals.

World leaders have called for an urgent reduction in the amount of antimicrobial drugs, including antibiotics, used in food systems.

The Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance said countries must stop the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs to promote growth in healthy animals.

  Antimicrobial drugs are also given to animals for veterinary purposes to treat and prevent disease.

Mitigation measures
A top priority is to reduce the use of drugs that are of the greatest importance to treat diseases in humans, animals and plants.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria can make foodborne infections such as Campylobacter and Salmonella harder to treat. Experts said climate change may also be contributing to an increase in AMR.

Consumers can also play a key role by choosing food from producers that use antimicrobial drugs responsibly, according to experts Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization director-general, said the consequences of antimicrobial resistance could dwarf those of COVID-19.

“We need urgent action to win the race against AMR. The longer the world delays, the greater the costs will be, in terms of costs to health systems, costs to food systems, costs to economies, and costs in lives and livelihoods,” he said.

“We need to invest in human health, animal health, plant, food and environmental eco-systems to properly respond to the growing threat of AMR. Many countries have national action plans on AMR but too few are funded for implementation.

FOOD SAFETY FROM FARM TO FORK.

Governments must play active role in food safety. Governments have an important role to play in food safety to ensure it gets the attention and investment it deserves, according to a senior food standards officer with the Codex Alimentarius secretariat.. This means that a government needs to have a strong food control system. For many countries this is still a challenge, they are still working toward having the appropriate infrastructure not only to establish regulations for food but to implement them and help food producers to know what they are supposed to do. They can also play a role in bringing together the different players and sectors along the food chain and making sure everyone is aware of the importance of food safety,” Cahill said. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said every year unsafe food is responsible for thousands of deaths, which are all preventable. “This year’s World Food Safety Day is a reminder that we can all play a role in making food safer. From the time food is grown and transported to when people are shopping and preparing meals each of these is a chance to prioritize food safety. “Food production is a chain of events, it starts even before the farm as some of the inputs such as animal feed also contribute to the safety of food. We have to look at what happens at the farm, what happens after that in terms of harvesting, what happens then in terms of processing and transformation of the crops or animal products and then the transportation and retail sectors. At all of those points there is an opportunity for our food to be contaminated and become unsafe. Producers must keep hazards or contaminants out of food or make sure they stay at as low a level as possible, said Cahill. “So whether you are growing crops or rearing animals, good hygiene and biosecurity are important, good husbandry and veterinary practices and also good environmental waste management so you are producing food in an environment which minimizes the possibility for that food to be contaminated,” she said Adopted from food safety news.

FOOD SAFETY FROM FARM TO FORK.

 FOOD SAFETY

Governments must play active role in food safety.

  Governments have an important role to play in food safety to ensure it gets the attention and investment it deserves, according to a senior food standards officer with the Codex Alimentarius secretariat..

  This means that a government needs to have a strong food control system. For many countries this is still a challenge, they are still working toward having the appropriate infrastructure not only to establish regulations for food but to implement them and help food producers to know what they are supposed to do. 

  They can also play a role in bringing together the different players and sectors along the food chain and making sure everyone is aware of the importance of food safety,” Cahill said.

   WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said every year unsafe food is responsible for thousands of deaths, which are all preventable.

  “This year’s World Food Safety Day is a reminder that we can all play a role in making food safer. From the time food is grown and transported to when people are shopping and preparing meals each of these is a chance to prioritize food safety. 

     “Food production is a chain of events, it starts even before the farm as some of the inputs such as animal feed also contribute to the safety of food. We have to look at what happens at the farm, what happens after that in terms of harvesting, what happens then in terms of processing and transformation of the crops or animal products and then the transportation and retail sectors.

    At all of those points there is an opportunity for our food to be contaminated and become unsafe.

WHO estimates malaria deaths could double because of interruptions caused by COVID-19.

WHO estimates malaria deaths could double because of interruptions caused by COVID-19.Interruptions to access to antimalarial medicines and disruptions to insecticide-treated net campaigns, or ITNs, because of COVID-19 could potentially double the number of malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020 when compared with 2018, according to a WHO modeling analysis. “This new modeling analysis reinforces WHO’s call for maintaining essential, life-saving services to prevent, detect and treat malaria during the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries have a critical window of opportunity now to ensure malaria services are maintained even as the virus spreads,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, said in a press release.

$2.7bn invested in malaria control globally.

According to WHO, $2.7bn invested in malaria control globally. World Health Organisation, WHO yesterday said despite an estimated US$ 2.7 billion invested in malaria control and elimination efforts globally in 2016 the world were still well below the target of $6.5 billion annual investment required to meet the 2030 targets of the WHO global malaria strategy. According to the World Malaria Report 2017, there were an estimated 5 million more malaria cases in 2016 than in 2015 and malaria deaths stood at around 445 000, a similar number to the previous year.The study revealed that Borno State in Nigeria benefited from WHO mass anti-malarial drug administration campaign this year that reached an estimated 1.2 million children below the age of five years.

Vietnam reports first Zika infections.

Mosquitoes have infected two women with the Zika virus in Vietnam, health authorities said on Tuesday, in the country’s first cases of a disease linked in Brazil to thousands of suspected cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect. A 64-year-old woman in the beach city of Nha Trang and a pregnant 33-year-old in Ho Chi Minh City fell sick in late March, and three rounds of tests have confirmed they are Zika-positive, health officials said. The sufferers are in stable condition and no further infections have been found among their relatives and neighbors, the health ministry said in a statement.“After epidemic investigations, we consider the source of infection could be mosquito,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said of the patient in Ho Chi Minh City. She is eight weeks pregnant, Long said in a Vietnam Television broadcast, but gave no details of the first woman. Health officials have quarantined the living areas of the patient’s families and taken samples from others living nearby for further tests, said Nguyen Chi Dung, head of Ho Chi Minh City’s department of preventive medicine. The World Health Organization is working closely with Vietnam, a WHO official told a health ministry meeting to announce the infections. Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans. The WHO says there is a strong scientific consensus that Zika can cause microcephaly as well as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis, though conclusive proof may take months or years. Microcephaly is characterized by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems. Zika has been endemic in Asia, with infection cases confirmed in Bangladesh, South Korea, Thailand and China. Brazil said it had confirmed more than 860 cases of microcephaly, most of which it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. It is investigating more than 4,200 additional suspected cases of microcephaly. Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2016/04/two-vietnamese-women-contract-zika-virus-first-in-vietnam-government/#QYRfc6AIXf2ehxoY.99

NANOTECHNOLOGY TO TREAT HUMAN WASTE AND REMOVE STENCH.

A toilet that does not need water, a sewage system or external power but instead uses nanotechnology to treat human waste, produce clean water and keep smells at bay is being developed by a British university.The innovative toilet uses a rotating mechanism to move waste into a holding chamber containing nano elements. The mechanism also blocks odors and keeps waste out of sight. “Once the waste is in the holding chamber we use membranes that take water out as vapor, which can then be condensed and available for people to use in their homes,” Alison Parker, lead researcher on the project, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The pathogens remain in the waste at the bottom of the holding chamber, so the water is basically pure and clean.”Cranfield University is developing the toilet as part of the global “Reinvent the toilet Challenge” launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Nanotechnology is the science of creating and working with materials about one nanometer wide, or one-billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide. According to the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) 2.4 billion people, mostly in rural areas, live without adequate toilets.Poor sanitation is linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio, the WHO says. A replaceable bag containing solid waste coated with a biodegradable nano-polymer which blocks odor will be collected periodically by a local operator, it says. story courtesy;News daily. http://newsdaily.com/2016/01/waterless-toilet-uses-nanotechnology-to-treat-waste-banish-smells/