The Food and Drugs Authority has introduced an E-Notification System for Food Safety in the country. The new system has been developed with support from the Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, after numerous shortfalls were identified among existing systems of key national and regional institutions across the country through a study.
The FDA is, therefore, exploring the opportunity to replace the current “scattered and non-performing E-Notification Systems” among key institutions, to safeguard the broader interests of both consumers and producers. Programme Officer for Nutrition at the WHO, Mrs. Akosua Kwakye at a two-day validation workshop in Accra commended Ghana and its partners for the bold initiative.
Programme Officer for Nutrition at the WHO, Mrs Akosua Kwakye said WHO deems food safety alert systems as important for early detection, and identification of high-risk foods and products for consumer protection. It is also to curb the consequences of a large foodborne disease outbreak or a food safety emergency.
Food safety, she said, remained a public health concern, with an estimated one out of every 10 people falling ill annually and thousands of others dying from consumption of contaminated food, with the aged, young children and the sick as worse affected. Mrs Kwakye noted that rapid urbanisation and globalisation of the food trade has resulted in an influx of a wide range of imported foods on the market. For this reason, countries, including Ghana, are facing the need to protect the consumer not only from locally produced food but also imported ones, drawing attention to the importance of strengthened food safety systems.
She said the benefits of implementing the E-Notification System are enormous because they would serve among others, as a common platform for information sharing among stakeholders and increase efficiency of reporting and responding to food safety incidents. It would not only address food safety concerns locally but also help to strengthen regional and international cooperation to exchange information and enhance readiness to plan and respond to emergencies.
FDA recommends E-Notification System
Head of Food Safety Management Department, FDA, Joycelyn Adeline Egyakwa-Amusah, in an overview of the report said several shortfalls were identified in areas such as human resource, poor digitization levels of institutions, lack of interoperability and poor coordination of such systems.
Madam Egyakwa-Amusah, therefore, stressed that one comprehensive E-notification system was recommended for the institutions identified in the management of food safety at both the national and regional levels in Ghana.
Head, Foodborne Disease Surveillance, FDA, Benjamin Osei-Tutu, indicated that the assessment process was facilitated by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and that Ghana was the first country to pilot the E-Notification System.
