Millions of adults die every year from bugs and toxins in what they eat, according to new WHO data that shows food-borne diseases are far more deadly than the UN agency previously estimated.
The research faults unsafe food for 1.2 million deaths per year in people over the age of five in Southeast Asia and Africa — three times more adult deaths than the Geneva-based WHO had thought occurred in the whole world.
“It is a picture that we have never had before,” WHO food safety director Jorgen Schlundt said in an interview. “We now have documentation of a significant burden outside the less than five group, that is major new information.”
Ailments linked to contaminated food and water have long been seen as a major threat to young children, who can dehydrate quickly. But the Danish veterinarian and microbiologist said the risks to older populations had been grossly underestimated.
VULNERABLE AGES
Older children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to severe illness from major food and water-borne diseases such as salmonella, listeria, E. coli, hepatitis A and cholera.
Food safety experts are now seeking to measure the burden of such afflictions in people over the age of five in the Arab world, Latin America and elsewhere in Asia including China.
And already, Schlundt said, health officials are recognizing the need to confront the most dangerous types of contamination in their industrial regulations and trade standards.
“Literally millions are dying every year and we know that a lot of these could be prevented,” he said. “There is a realization that instead of doing what we did in the past, in the future we should really focus on where the problems are.”
Many of the contaminants that have made headlines in recent years in the US, such as salmonella and E. coli, also exist in poorer countries but are not monitored as carefully there, Schlundt said.
MODERN PRODUCTION
Health authorities in developed countries are now much more able to document food safety risks because of tests that can quickly connect disparate cases of illness to tainted foods such as lettuce, peppers, spinach and beef.
But the WHO expert said that some ailments have also become more prevalent in the food system alongside the globalization of the food supply and the rise of modern food production methods, which can propagate ailments quickly and on a large scale.
“There are certain pathogens that have increased over the last 20 or 30 years. Some problems clearly have moved and become bigger because of the ways that we produce,” he said.
Simple steps can cut the levels of chemicals and toxins in foods, such as avoiding conditions where mould can grow, Schlundt said. Farming techniques can also root out microorganisms from the food chain and parasites can be wiped out by targeting their hosts and transmission patterns, he said.
Because it is now clear that some foods are more vulnerable to certain food-borne ailments than others, health officials are well placed to focus their energies on monitoring areas posing the highest potential disease risk, Schlundt said.
Another vital part of the food-borne disease fight is having consumers take precautions in the way they prepare foods, and ensuring patients and health workers take symptoms such as diarrhea seriously as a risk across population groups.
“Many of the deaths that we see in developing countries, if they had been treated at the right time, they would not have died,” Schlundt said.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
The ongoing Iran conflict is putting Taiwan’s energy fragility on full display — the island of 23 million people, home to the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing, is highly dependent on imported oil and gas, especially that from the Middle East. In 2025, 69.6 percent of Taiwan’s crude oil and 38.7 percent of liquified natural gas were sourced from the Middle East. In the same year, 62 percent of crude oil and 34 percent of LNG to Taiwan went through the Strait of Hormuz. Taiwan’s state-run oil company CPC Corp’s benchmark crude oil price (70 percent Dubai, 30 percent Brent)
RSS