Foodborne Diseases

Primary reference(s)

WHO, no date a. Foodborne diseases. World Health Organization (WHO). Accessed 16 February 2025.

Annotations

Key relevant UN convention / multilateral treaty

The Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and WHO Food Standards Program (Codex Alimentarius Commission) for the establishment of food safety standards, such as maximum levels for food additives (quantitative levels above which there is a risk for consumers’ health) (FAO & WHO, no date). 

The WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) (WTO, no date).

International Health Regulations (2005), 3rd ed. (WHO, 2016). 

Drivers

Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhoea to cancers. It also creates a vicious cycle of disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children, the elderly and the sick. Good collaboration between governments, food producers, and consumers is needed to help ensure food safety and stronger food systems (WHO, 2024).

Impacts

Every year, nearly one in 10 people around the world fall ill after eating contaminated food, leading to over 420,000 deaths. Children are disproportionately affected, with 125,000 deaths every year in people under 5 years of age. The majority of these cases are caused by diarrhoeal diseases. Other serious consequences of foodborne diseases include kidney and liver failure, brain and neural disorders, reactive arthritis and cancer (WHO, no date a).

Multi-hazard context

Foodborne diseases are closely linked to poverty in low- and middle-income countries but are a growing public health issue around the world. Increasing international trade and longer, more complex food chains increase the risk of food contamination and the transport of infected food products across national borders. Growing cities, climate change, migration and growing international travel compound these issues and expose people to new hazards (WHO, no date a).

Risk Management

WHO works to assist Member States in building capacity to prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks. Foodborne diseases are reflected in several targets of United Nations Sustainable Developmental Goal 3 and are a priority area within WHO’s work Activities include research and independent scientific assessments of food-related hazards, foodborne disease awareness programmes, and helping to promote food safety through national healthcare programmes (WHO, no date a).  WHO aims to strengthen national food control systems to facilitate global prevention, detection and response to public health threats associated with unsafe food (WHO, 2025). To do this, WHO supports Member States by: 

• facilitating the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety (2022–2030) to support Member States in strengthening their national food control systems and reducing the burden of foodborne diseases through the activities of the WHO Alliance for Food Safety tacking the One Health approach (WHO, 2022);
• providing independent scientific assessments on microbiological and chemical hazards that form the basis for international food standards, guidelines, and recommendations, known as the Codex Alimentarius (FAO & WHO, no date);
• assessing the performance of national food control systems throughout the entire food chain, identifying priority areas for further development, and measuring and evaluating progress over time through the FAO/WHO food control system assessment tool (WHO and FAO, 2021);  
• assessing the safety of new technologies used in food production, such as genetic modification, cultivated food products and nanotechnology;
• helping implement adequate infrastructure to manage food safety risks and respond to food safety emergencies through the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) (WHO, no date c);
• promoting safe food handling through systematic disease prevention and awareness programmes, through the WHO Five Keys to Safer Food message and training materials (WHO, 2006);
• advocating for food safety as an important component of health security and for integrating food safety into national policies and programmes in line with the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) (WHO, 2016);
• strengthening surveillance of and response to foodborne diseases globally by supporting countries to improve their current foodborne disease surveillance and response activities (WHO, 2017) (including through the use of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) (WHO, 2023)) and integrate them into existing national surveillance and response systems required by the IHR 2005; and
• monitoring regularly the global burden of foodborne diseases at national, regional and international levels (WHO, no date d), and supporting countries to estimate the national burden of foodborne diseases (WHO, 2021 a) or utilize existing burden estimates to inform food safety policies. 

WHO works closely with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and other international organizations to ensure food safety along the entire food chain from production to consumption, in line with the One health joint plan of action (‎2022‒2026)‎: working together for the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment (FAO et al., 2022).

Monitoring

WHO supports countries to conduct all-hazards strategic risk assessment in the contexts of health emergencies and disasters, which results in the development of a country risk profile. Empowered with the country risk profile, inclusive of a seasonal risk calendar, countries can anticipate potential emergencies before they occur to trigger early alerts and inform early actions (WHO, 2021 b).

WHO's Early Warning, Alert and Response System (EWARS) has been designed to improve disease outbreak detection in emergency settings, such as in countries in conflict or following a natural disaster. It is a simple and cost-effective way to rapidly set up a disease surveillance system. EWARS is deployed during an emergency as an adjunct to the national disease surveillance system. WHO works with Ministries of Health and health sector partners to train local health workers to use the system. After the emergency, EWARS should re-integrate back into the national system (WHO, no date b).