Unsafe food kills 1.5m people annually – WHO warns

The World Health Organisation (WHO), has warned against the consumption of unsafe food, revealing that it causes an estimated 866 million illnesses and 1.5 million deaths every year worldwide.

According to new data released ahead of next week’s World Food Safety Day (WFSD), WHO noted that children under five are particularly vulnerable.

They highlighted that unsafe food is any food that may cause illness, injury, or physical harm when consumed. they are typically contaminated by biological (bacteria, parasites), chemical (toxins, heavy metals), or physical (glass, metal) agents.

According to the WHO, exposure to chemicals such as lead and methylmercury through food can also damage developing brains and cause lifelong neurological and developmental problems in children.

“Food safety is not an abstract issue – it touches every meal, every family, every day. Unsafe food has always been a major public health concern, but until now, we lacked the bigger picture of its staggering human and economic toll. These new estimates change that,” WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said.

According to the WHO, chemical hazards accounted for 73 per cent of deaths from contaminated food in 2021. Inorganic arsenic and lead were the leading contributors, largely because prolonged exposure increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Together, the two substances were linked to more than one million deaths in a single year.

WHO said Africa and Southeast Asia account for nearly three-quarters of all foodborne illnesses and 60 per cent of global deaths. They also noted that foodborne diseases resulted in around 310 billion dollars in lost productivity in 2021 due to time away from work.

“This report is a wake-up call – but also a roadmap,” Yuki Minato, a WHO technical officer for food safety and senior author of the study published in The Lancet Global Health, said.

“The data show that foodborne diseases are not only persistent but are being made worse by climate change, which increases contamination risks, and by antimicrobial resistance, which makes infections harder to treat. We cannot tackle these threats alone,” he added.