Yesterday was World Food Safety Day, and this year the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization celebrated it under the theme: From burden to solutions – safe food everywhere. ALSO READ: Food safety alert: RBC flags increased contamination risk during holidays On the same occasion, WHO released updated data on the — global burden of foodborne diseases — for the period of 2000-2021 and the numbers are staggering. The agency now estimates that unsafe food causes roughly 866 million illnesses and 1.52 million deaths every year. Nearly one in nine people on earth gets sick from foodborne diseases each year. ALSO READ: Food poisoning: Recognising risks and ensuring safety The 2026 estimates are the first major update since WHO's landmark 2015 report, and they don't just refresh the old figures — they expand the picture, adding heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, lead, and methylmercury to the list of hazards, and for the first time offering country-by-country estimates so nations can see exactly where their own burden lies. ALSO READ: FDA vows to strengthen food safety checks Those are big numbers. They are so big that they can become abstract — a statistic you nod at and scroll past. For people working in the domain, we know that these are not abstract numbers and that behind these numbers there are human beings whose lives are affected and sometimes shattered in dramatic ways. Behind these 866 million, there is Brianne Kiner, who spent months in a coma with four other children who did not survive after eating a hamburger in what is now infamously known as the Jack in the Box outbreak of 1993 in the USA. Behind these numbers are the 300,000 affected children that were identified in China, among which 54,000 were hospitalized with six deaths following the now famous 2008 Chinese food safety scandal of infant formula contaminated with melamine. Behind these numbers are world’s deadliest 2017-2018 South African listeriosis outbreak that resulted in 1,060 confirmed cases of listeriosis during the outbreak and 216 deaths from eating contaminated processed meats. Rwanda had at that time to close its imported meats from South Africa during that period. These are just few of very publicized cases to give a meaning to the WHO 866 million global illnesses due to the consumption of unsafe food. All this being said, WHO’s report is also clear. There are – solutions – and these numbers are preventable. What is needed is a strong regulatory system, with clarified respective roles and responsibilities for the food business operators and the government, building strong food systems with a performant national food control system and investments in research and innovation. The numbers provided by WHO were calculated, computed and source attributed using data provided by countries and unfortunately the contribution of developing countries remain very weak. An outbreak that is never detected produces no data. A traceback that is never completed names no source. A whole-genome sequence that is never run links no illness to its cause. The burden does not disappear when we stop counting it. It just disappears from the page and that is the current situation in Rwanda and in many African and developing countries which are operating in darkness. These data are released by WHO at a time when Rwanda is trying to improve its regulatory system by a reorganization of its agencies (RSB, RICA and RFDA) involved in regulating the safety of our food supply and of the quality of industrial products following the complaints of the business operators who have to bear the financial burden of increased fees and delays in cargo releases due to overlap of mandates and services of these agencies. The timing is excellent and we need to cease this opportunity to do an overall and thorough reorganization of these agencies that is science based and grounded in what is considered as best practices at international level to come up with a modernized regulatory system that will allow us not only to address the issues raised by the private sector but a modern system that will help us to address current and future risks challenges, protect consumers and facilitate trade. A modern system that can serve as a model for other developing countries to emulate. The know-how and technical expertise are available and what remains is the political support needed to make this reorganization a reality. The writer is Ex-Senior Executive with the Government of Canada, Ex-Senior Officer with the World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Lead Expert for the African Union Food Safety Strategy 2022-2036 and Lead Expert for the Food Safety Strategic Framework of Africa CDC of the African Union.
