Health experts on Saturday called for collaborative efforts of all disciplines to stop adulteration in food because of the use of chemicals and pesticides, which pose a serious health hazard in Bangladesh. They said without food safety different emerging diseases would never be controlled only by curative measure. They were speaking in the concluding session of a three-day health conference organised by Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research at Spectra Convention Centre in the city.
M Mushtaq Husain, IEDCR senior scientific officer in his presentation, said high use of pesticide in fruits and vegetables exposes people, especially children, to serious health risk.
He said they monitored use of pesticide in the fruits orchard in different parts of the country (two villages of Atrai and Badalgachi sub-districts of Naogaon from March to June, 2008, two villages of the Dhamrai upazilla (sub-district) of Dhaka in April-May in 2009, Dinajpur Sadar Upazilla in 2012).
They found that over 50 per cent of the infected children, aged between seven months and 7.5 years, died of pesticide infection, he said.
‘Local physicians initially diagnosed them as having contracted encephalitis or pneumonia and families did not report any exposures to pesticides in those cases,’ he said.
They called upon all to make combined efforts to combat these diseases having links with other disciplines.
The experts on health, animal, agriculture and environment also stressed adapting a combined approach (one health approach- collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines) to control the transmitted diseases among human, animal and agriculture product.
They said the country should adapt ‘one health approach’ immediately under which any emerging diseases could be monitored and managed together.
On Friday, the second day of the conference, the experts in different fields presented how emerging diseases like avian influenza (bird flu), nipah virus, anthrax and swine flu spread from animal to human and could be controlled by collaborative efforts.
IEDCR director Mahmudur Rahman said without collaborative programme these diseases would never be prevented.
The concept of ‘one health initiative’ is a movement to forge co-equal, all inclusive collaborations between physicians, veterinarians, environmentalists, agriculturalists, dentists, nurses and other scientific-health and environmentally related disciplines.
The ‘one health approach’ was developed in the country 2007 and plan of action was taken in 2011.
-With New Age input
