Report of surveillance on FS inspection programs

DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION

Food safety inspection and control is one among important activities of the national food control system (NFCS) to prioritize early detection, prevention and effective handling of food safety (FS) incidents including foodborne diseases (FBD), food poisoning. Vietnam has Law on FS and a system of legal documents guiding on implementation inspection and control FS with assignments to Competent Authorities (CA) of MARD, MOH and MoIT, with relatively clear decentralization from the central to local government levels.

The 2015 WHO report  estimates the global burden of FBD and emphasizes that more than 600 million FBD cases and 420,000 deaths may be recorded each year According to a report by Vietnam Food Administration (under MOH) 1,789 outbreaks, 58,949 affected people with 414 deaths were recorded in 2006-2015; 1,441 outbreaks, 40,995 affected people, 240 deaths from food poisoning or FBDs were recorded in 2012-2021. The Ministry of Health reveals that only 45 poisoning cases with 605 affected and 21 deaths were recorded in 2022, but 94 outbreaks with 1,225 hospitalized people and 20 deaths were recorded in the first 9 months of 2023. In Korea, 3,380 outbreaks, 68,475 people affected by food poisoning or FBD were reported in 2013-2023 The concern is that a good NFCS requires an effective FS inspection and control program to prevent and limit food poisoning or FBDs with small numbers of deaths.