You might not think about food borne illnesses or acute gastroenteritis too often - but according to health experts it exacts a costly toll annually - both in treatment and days lost to work.
And if the term "food borne illness" or gastroenteritis have you scratching your head - we mean simply - that oh so unpleasant word - diarrhea.
It's not dinnertime talk, but it is one of the major causes of illness and death worldwide.
A recent study showed that at least 70% of diarrheal diseases are food borne. And now the ministry of health in collaboration with PAHO and the Caribbean Epidemiology Center (CAREC) is launching the "Burden of Illness Study" - which will try to find out what causes diarrhea in Belize.
CAREC's expert on this is Dr. Lisa Indar who told us what has been found so far in other Caribbean countries.
Dr. Lisa Indar
"We have conducted a study so far in 8 countries and the economic impact that we have seen is far greater than what we expected, for instance, a small country like Grenada where the population was about 60,000 we found that the economic impact range in the millions. Guyana, another small country where the population was very small, the economic impact were going in 40s-50s of millions. So it's quite expensive, we sometimes do not realize the cost of gastroenteritis because it's not one of those diseases that require so much attention when its occurring - you get a bot diarrhea and you go home and you just take a day off. But the thing is that there is a cost. There is a cost of medication; there is a cost of staying home and the fact that it is a very common illness as we have been seeing. The cost is actually greater the country."
Dr. Peter Allen, CEO Ministry of Health
"We want to know exactly how many cases there are in the country and we want to know what causes the cases. There are lots of different reasons from neuron virus to Rota virus to salmonella of course, but we don't have a clear handle on exactly what causes gastroenteritis in Belize and the reason that's important is because we want to become more efficient and more effective in our interventions, so for each of those causative agents the intervention would be slightly different. The more we know about the burden of diseases in a society the more effectively and efficiently we can control those diseases."
Dr. Lisa Indar
"We are really, hoping, asking, begging that people who are coming in with diarrhea that you take a stool sample and send it to the labs. The labs have been trained to test for a wider range of food borne pathogens, so we can then decide what is really causing the illnesses."
Jules Vasquez
"What is the scope of the survey and how soon do you all expect to have a finding?"
Dr. Peter Allen, CEO Ministry of Health
"This is a big study and quite expensive as well. We are being supported with our own funds but also through CAREC and the Pan American Health Organization. It will take 12 months and we really need the public to understand the importance of this and to understand that with good information we will be able to provide a better service for them, so it's worthwhile for all of us."
The study starts up on September 24th and finishes in September 2013.
It is noteworthy that over 14 thousand food handlers have been trained and certified by the Ministry of Health in the past three years.
Email
Print