A Comparison of the Burden of Foodborne and Waterborne Diseases in Three World Regions, 2008

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 2.2 million deaths occur each year because of diarrheal diseases. Data from WHO show that diarrheal illnesses are a significant cause of mortality in children under five years old in six world regions; however, there are few comparative data on the burden of foodborne diseases, which are primarily diarrheal, among the general population in the WHO-defined regions. The focus of this research was to collect and analyze data on foodborne and waterborne outbreaks, available through public sources, to assess the disease burden across world regions. Researchers at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in the United States collected 416 foodborne and waterborne outbreak reports in English from six world regions during the calendar year 2008. Three regions provided adequate data for comparison; Africa was the region with the highest number of reports (128), followed by the Western Pacific region (118 reports) and Europe (97 reports). Comparisons of these three regions included seasonality of outbreaks, rates of identification of the cause (food, water, unspecified), and reported size of outbreaks by morbidity and mortality. Findings demonstrated that for many regions, valuable information on the incidence of foodborne and waterborne outbreaks can be gathered from the media, international organizations and other non-governmental sources. A peer-reviewed article