The sixth meeting of the FERG for 2021-2025 is held virtually on two days, 5 and 7 December 2023. In order to prepare the updated estimates of the global, regional and national burden of foodborne diseases by 2025 as it was so mandated by the World Health Assembly resolution (WHA73.5), WHO is undertaking a process to collect required data. Based on the advices received from the FERG, it was decided that systematic reviews and other required literature reviews will be commissioned to primarily collect required data to generate the next estimates. The general methodology was developed (See Concept Note) and various study groups have been commissioned.
This meeting has an expanded audience, as the FERG and WHO members are joined by a significant number of the commissioned scientists for the project. The purpose of the meeting is to hear from these scientists about the progress of their work, so to learn from each other and raise any issues that might benefit from a wider discussion. Specific objectives are as follows:
Objectives
- Share overall implementation of the WHO initiative to estimate the burden of foodborne diseases
- Share progress updates on data collection processes
- An overview from Sciensano team
- Selected systematic review groups to present their review progress
- Share progress updates on source attribution expert elicitation study
- Discuss data inputs from IHME
- Understand planned computational methodology
- Discuss and identify prioritized agenda items for 7th expert meeting of the FERG planned in February 2024