Public health concerns for food contamination in Ghana: A scoping review

Abstract

Nutrition is sturdily and rapidly becoming the foremost determinant of health in today’s Sars-Cov-2 and climate change ravaged world. While safe food sustains life, contamination obliterates its values and could result in death and short to long term morbidity. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore food contamination in Ghana, between 2001–2022. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s procedure, a systematic literature search from PubMed, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Scopus, Emeralds Insight, Google Scholar, and Google was carried out. Following the inclusion criteria, 40 published and grey literature were covered in this review. The review revealed the following: Studies on food contamination involving Greater Accra, Ashanti, Central, and Eastern Regions alone account for over 50% of the total number of such studies conducted in Ghana; regulators failed in enforcing regulations, monitoring and supervision; managers failed to provide adequate infrastructure and facilities. The most common food safety risks of public health concern are: i) micro-organisms (E. coli/faecal coliforms, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella spp, Bacillus cereus, and Viral hepatitis); ii) drugs (Amoxicillin, Chlortetracycline, Ciprofloxacin, Danofloxacin, and Doxycycline) and; iii) chemicals (Chlorpyrifos). Salad, vegetables, sliced mango, meat pie, and snail khebab are of high public health risks. The following deductions were made from the review: Highly contaminated food results in death, short to long term morbidity, economic loss, and threatens to displace Ghana’s efforts at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2. Thus, Government must resource key regulatory bodies to enhance their operational capacity, regulators must foster collaboration in monitoring and supervision of food vendors, and managers of food service outlets must provide adequate facilities to engender food safety culture.

Compliance to food safety standards - Determining the barriers within the hotel industry

“…Besides, the risk of getting infections is high, where asymptomatic food handlers prepare and serve foods to customers [4]. Foods contaminated by microbes are usually difficult to detect since these microbes are imperceptible and can cause illness [5,6]. The problem is exacerbated in countries where lack of food handling practices, inadequate food safety laws, weak regulatory systems, lack of financial resources to invest in safer equipment, and lack of food safety training are common leading to noncompliance to safe food standards [7,8,9].…”

“…The problem is exacerbated in countries where lack of food handling practices, inadequate food safety laws, weak regulatory systems, lack of financial resources to invest in safer equipment, and lack of food safety training are common leading to noncompliance to safe food standards [7,8,9]. Meanwhile, most foodborne diseases may be self-limiting yet, some can be very fatal leading to increased morbidity and mortality [5,10]. For instance, globally, over 600 million people die after consuming contaminated food [11].…”

“…In the Central and Western Regions of Ghana, foodborne disease infestation is on the rise and this may be due to asymptomatic food handlers that may be contaminating food and water [12]. The evidence is that, surveillance and epidemiological data indicate that poor food handling practices, inadequate infrastructural facilities and ineffective monitoring/supervision in food service establishments are linked to the causative chain of foodborne diseases [5,6,13]. Several previous studies [5,13,14,15,16,17] reported poor food safety knowledge, attitude and practices of food handlers however, few studies have been conducted on the barriers affecting compliance with food safety standards.…”

“…The evidence is that, surveillance and epidemiological data indicate that poor food handling practices, inadequate infrastructural facilities and ineffective monitoring/supervision in food service establishments are linked to the causative chain of foodborne diseases [5,6,13]. Several previous studies [5,13,14,15,16,17] reported poor food safety knowledge, attitude and practices of food handlers however, few studies have been conducted on the barriers affecting compliance with food safety standards. Previous studies indicate that food preparation processes expose food to many contaminants and this needs to be addressed [18,19,20].…”