BackgroundFoodborne diseases are important worldwide, resulting in considerable morbidity and mortality. To our knowledge, we present the first global and regional estimates of the disease burden of the most important foodborne bacterial, protozoal, and viral diseases.Methods and FindingsWe synthesized data on the number of foodborne illnesses, sequelae, deaths, and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), for all diseases with sufficient data to support global and regional estimates, by age and region. The data sources included varied by pathogen and included systematic reviews, cohort studies, surveillance studies and other burden of disease assessments. We sought relevant data circa 2010, and included sources from 1990–2012. The number of studies per pathogen ranged from as few as 5 studies for bacterial intoxications through to 494 studies for diarrheal pathogens. To estimate mortality for Mycobacterium bovis infections and morbidity and mortality for invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica infections, we excluded cases attributed to HIV infection. We excluded stillbirths in our estimates. We estimate that the 22 diseases included in our study resulted in two billion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1.5–2.9 billion) cases, over one million (95% UI 0.89–1.4 million) deaths, and 78.7 million (95% UI 65.0–97.7 million) DALYs in 2010. To estimate the burden due to contaminated food, we then applied proportions of infections that were estimated to be foodborne from a global expert elicitation. Waterborne transmission of disease was not included. We estimate that 29% (95% UI 23–36%) of cases caused by diseases in our study, or 582 million (95% UI 401–922 million), were transmitted by contaminated food, resulting in 25.2 million (95% UI 17.5–37.0 million) DALYs. Norovirus was the leading cause of foodborne illness causing 125 million (95% UI 70–251 million) cases, while Campylobacter spp. caused 96 million (95% UI 52–177 million) foodborne illnesses. Of all foodborne diseases, diarrheal and invasive infections due to non-typhoidal S. enterica infections resulted in the highest burden, causing 4.07 million (95% UI 2.49–6.27 million) DALYs. Regionally, DALYs per 100,000 population were highest in the African region followed by the South East Asian region. Considerable burden of foodborne disease is borne by children less than five years of age. Major limitations of our study include data gaps, particularly in middle- and high-mortality countries, and uncertainty around the proportion of diseases that were foodborne.ConclusionsFoodborne diseases result in a large disease burden, particularly in children. Although it is known that diarrheal diseases are a major burden in children, we have demonstrated for the first time the importance of contaminated food as a cause. There is a need to focus food safety interventions on preventing foodborne diseases, particularly in low- and middle-income settings.
Estimation of pathogen-specific causes of child diarrhea deaths is needed to guide vaccine development and other prevention strategies. We did a systematic review of articles published between 1990 and 2011 reporting at least one of 13 pathogens in children <5 years of age hospitalized with diarrhea. We included 2011 rotavirus data from the Rotavirus Surveillance Network coordinated by WHO. We excluded studies conducted during diarrhea outbreaks that did not discriminate between inpatient and outpatient cases, reporting nosocomial infections, those conducted in special populations, not done with adequate methods, and rotavirus studies in countries where the rotavirus vaccine was used. Age-adjusted median proportions for each pathogen were calculated and applied to 712 000 deaths due to diarrhea in children under 5 years for 2011, assuming that those observed among children hospitalized for diarrhea represent those causing child diarrhea deaths. 163 articles and WHO studies done in 31 countries were selected representing 286 inpatient studies. Studies seeking only one pathogen found higher proportions for some pathogens than studies seeking multiple pathogens (e.g. 39% rotavirus in 180 single-pathogen studies vs. 20% in 24 studies with 5–13 pathogens, p<0·0001). The percentage of episodes for which no pathogen could be identified was estimated to be 34%; the total of all age-adjusted percentages for pathogens and no-pathogen cases was 138%. Adjusting all proportions, including unknowns, to add to 100%, we estimated that rotavirus caused 197 000 [Uncertainty range (UR) 110 000–295 000], enteropathogenic E. coli 79 000 (UR 31 000–146 000), calicivirus 71 000 (UR 39 000–113 000), and enterotoxigenic E. coli 42 000 (UR 20 000–76 000) deaths. Rotavirus, calicivirus, enteropathogenic and enterotoxigenic E. coli cause more than half of all diarrheal deaths in children <5 years in the world.
Background The Lives Saved Tool (LiST) uses estimates of the effects of interventions on cause-specific child mortality as a basis for generating projections of child lives that could be saved by increasing coverage of effective interventions. Estimates of intervention effects are an essential element of LiST, and need to reflect the best available scientific evidence. This article describes the guidelines developed by the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) that are applied by scientists conducting reviews of intervention effects for use in LiST.Methods The guidelines build on and extend those developed by the Cochrane Collaboration and the Working Group for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). They reflect the experience gained by the CHERG intervention review groups in conducting the reviews published in this volume, and will continue to be refined through future reviews.Presentation of the guidelines Expected products and guidelines are described for six steps in the CHERG intervention review process: (i) defining the scope of the review; (ii) conducting the literature search; (iii) extracting information from individual studies; (iv) assessing and summarizing the evidence; (v) translating the evidence into estimates of intervention effects and (vi) presenting the results.Conclusions The CHERG intervention reviews represent an ambitious effort to summarize existing evidence and use it as the basis for supporting sound public health decision making through LiST. These efforts will continue, and a similar process is now under way to assess intervention effects for reducing maternal mortality.
BackgroundDiarrhoeal diseases are major contributors to the global burden of disease, particularly in children. However, comprehensive estimates of the incidence and mortality due to specific aetiologies of diarrhoeal diseases are not available. The objective of this study is to provide estimates of the global and regional incidence and mortality of diarrhoeal diseases caused by nine pathogens that are commonly transmitted through foods.Methods and FindingsWe abstracted data from systematic reviews and, depending on the overall mortality rates of the country, applied either a national incidence estimate approach or a modified Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) approach to estimate the aetiology-specific incidence and mortality of diarrhoeal diseases, by age and region. The nine diarrhoeal diseases assessed caused an estimated 1.8 billion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1.1–3.3 billion) cases and 599,000 (95% UI 472,000–802,000) deaths worldwide in 2010. The largest number of cases were caused by norovirus (677 million; 95% UI 468–1,153 million), enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) (233 million; 95% UI 154–380 million), Shigella spp. (188 million; 95% UI 94–379 million) and Giardia lamblia (179 million; 95% UI 125–263); the largest number of deaths were caused by norovirus (213,515; 95% UI 171,783–266,561), enteropathogenic E. coli (121,455; 95% UI 103,657–143,348), ETEC (73,041; 95% UI 55,474–96,984) and Shigella (64,993; 95% UI 48,966–92,357). There were marked regional differences in incidence and mortality for these nine diseases. Nearly 40% of cases and 43% of deaths caused by these nine diarrhoeal diseases occurred in children under five years of age.ConclusionsDiarrhoeal diseases caused by these nine pathogens are responsible for a large disease burden, particularly in children. These aetiology-specific burden estimates can inform efforts to reduce diarrhoeal diseases caused by these nine pathogens commonly transmitted through foods.
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