FORT PORTAL – In a bid to improve food hygiene standards, Fort Portal City has resolved to issue food hygiene certificates to all hotel owners, street food vendors, and restaurants.
According to the city mayor, Edison Asaba Ruyonga, the process of issuing certificates will be done in partnership with Kabarole Research and Resource Center [KRC] nutrition department.
“For anybody to start a food vending business, hotel or restaurant will be required to have a license and a hygiene certificate to confirm that his/her services are safe. This will help us improve food safety standards, especially on the streets,” Asaba said.
Asaba revealed that all street food vendors will have to go through medical tests before they can ably sell or vend food to consumers to reduce diseases associated with contaminated food.
“Much as it is good that all categories of people are allowed in the food business, the safety of the food they give to people must be ensured,” he noted.
Bernard Bwambale a nutritionist and dietitian at KRC said at least 50 percent of food consumers in Fort Portal city eat contaminated food resulting in food-borne diseases.
“As KRC, we have embarked on sensitizing the general public including food vendors on food safety and how to avoid food contamination. Many diseases have come up because of eating contaminated food and most people consume it unknowingly,” he said.
Bwambale noted that most of the food vendors and restaurant owners prepare food from polythene bags, operate from dirty areas among others which lead to food contamination and food-borne illnesses.
According to a 2019 report by the Ministry of Health, about 1.3 million Ugandans are diagnosed with food borne-diseases annually while 14 percent of all diseases treated every year are due to food contamination.
The report further shows that out of these, children under five years of age account for 40 percent of the people diagnosed with food-borne diseases.
Some of the most common food borne diseases includes cholera, acute non-bloody diarrhea, persistent non-bloody diarrhea and typhoid.
According to the World Health Organization [WHO], non-communicable diseases [NCDs] kill 40 million people each year.
Each year, 15mln people worldwide between the ages of 30 and 69 years die from an NCD. Cardiovascular diseases account for 17.7mln people annually, followed by cancers [8.8mln], respiratory diseases [3.9mln], and diabetes [1.6mln], according to WHO.
Polyethylene bag has the same effect on human beings, just as it has on the environment.
Polythene has chemicals that can be transferred to food. When cooking foods like matooke, sweat potatoes and cassava, people tend to use polythene bags to wrap and cover the food. However, public health experts say, this is unhealthy.
This is because polythene has chemicals that can be transferred to food as it cooks.
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