Foodborne diseases are a major cause of human morbidity and mortality. According to the first-ever global estimates produced by the WHO Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (WHO FERG), foodborne diseases caused 600 million illnesses, 420 000 deaths, and 33 million Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in 2010.
In 2021, 26 new members of the FERG were appointed to serve for 3 years in 2021-2024 with the specific terms of reference.5 The first meeting was held in July 2021, to situate FERG’s work in the context of related WHO’s work in food safety, including the Global Burden of Disease (GBD), global food safety strategy development and its monitoring and evaluation, country support for estimating the national burden of foodborne diseases; to outline objectives of the FERG2 (2021-2024); to agree on the short and long term objectives of the FERG within and beyond 2024; and to agree and establish a process to develop a workplan within the next 6 months.
This third meeting is organized to reach an agreement on the concrete plan of actions towards 2025 reporting on the updated global estimates of the burden of foodborne diseases, and to advance a plan for country support activities as well as the development on the impact measurement framework.
Specific objectives are to:
- Share a progress update from all FERG taskforces and WHO
- Agree on the overall work plan and budgetary needs/priorities for the above-mentioned activities, including:
- Final roadmap toward 2025 reporting on the updated global burden of foodborne diseases
- Advance the publication plan and journal options to work on the collection
- Agreement on the plan commissioning systematic reviews
- Advanced roadmap for country support
- Advance roadmap for developing the impact measurement framework
- Discuss required internal and external collaborations
- Understand WHO's publication policy