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National food-borne disease surveillance launched

The UAE authorities have decided to set up an integrated, national mechanism for surveillance and investigation of food-borne diseases, it was announced on Thursday.

The announcement by a top food safety officer in the country closely follows the Khaleej Times report published on Thursday that highlighted the need for a nation-wide mechanism to report and investigate suspected food-borne illnesses like the one that is now available in Dubai.

The report that analysed the causes of the weekend deaths of some children in the UAE, had also stressed that the cases point to a lack of awareness about the symptoms, prevention and treatment of food and chemical poisoning.

Khalid Mohammed Sharif Al Awadhi, director of the Food Control Department at Dubai Municipality, announced the decision by the authorities to set up the national-level food-borne disease surveillance and investigation system.

He said representatives from 17 local and federal institutions had recently attended a programme to review the existing systems to monitor food-related incidents and diseases at the national level. The decision to set up the new system was taken at the programme held at the Dubai Municipality, which has been assigned to head the national level system.

A member of the National Committee for Food Safety, Al Awadhi said the programme came as part of the strategic vision of the National Committee for Food Safety at the Ministry of Environment and Water.

“Dubai Municipality has been assigned with the new mission given the track record of its regional system which was established two years ago,” he said in a press statement.

Set up in collaboration with the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and under the guidance of the World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Dubai Municipality’s system has brought in new definition, treatment and investigation procedures for food poisoning cases. It requires all hospitals to report food related illnesses within a short time to the DHA. At the same time, DM’s food inspectors will carry out necessary investigations, especially when the sickness involves a multiple number of patients.

According to officials, the new measures have helped in curtailing the practice of haphazardly diagnosing most cases of vomiting and or diarrhea as symptoms of food poisoning, thereby enabling proper diagnosis and treatment of affected patients. The investigation procedures have also helped in diagnosing some pesticide poisoning cases initially diagnosed as suspected food poisoning.

Al Awadhi said those procedures would soon be introduced in other emirates as well, so that there is a nation-wide system to handle suspected food poisoning cases. “Now we are to launch an integrated system which will carry out the surveillance and investigations at the national level. We will be holding a series of sittings to define (the) role of each institutions and to set the priorities,” he said.

As a first step towards this goal, he said, the Dubai Municipality is preparing a handbook. The first part of the handbook will target healthcare institutions and the second part will benefit inspectors examining the environment or premises of suspected food poisoning.

Asia Abdulwahab Alraeesi who heads the Food Studies and Planning at the DM Food Control Department, told Khaleej Times that the cases of deaths of children during the weekend in the UAE, which were attributed to food poisoning, had put pressure on the authorities to come up with the national system at the earliest.

“The Dubai model has been found to be successful and can be expanded to the other emirates,” said Alraeesi.

In February this year, the municipality had also announced Dubai’s plan to join PulseNet International, an international laboratory network that monitors food-borne bacteria through their DNA fingerprints. The move is expected to help control the import of contaminated food traced to be the source of food-borne diseases.— sajila@khaleejtimes.com