Accra: A two-day trainer of trainers' workshop for disease surveillance officers across the Greater Accra region, focusing on food safety event surveillance and response in Ghana, has commenced in Accra. Organized by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the workshop aims to improve preparedness and response to food safety emergencies across all districts in Ghana. According to Ghana News Agency, the workshop seeks to train core teams for implementing food safety event surveillance and response in health facilities. It also aims to enhance the knowledge of peripheral level disease surveillance teams on foodborne disease surveillance and build staff capacity to effectively detect and respond to foodborne disease outbreaks. Mr. Roderick Kwabena Daddey-Adjei, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Food Division, FDA, highlighted the improvements brought by the Food Safety Emergency Response Plan (FoSERP) and the integration of foodborne disease surveilla nce into the National Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) System. He emphasized the importance of effective collaboration and a resilient food safety emergency response plan in addressing the full spectrum of hazards and threats along the food chain. According to the World Health Organization, there has been a significant rise in reported cases of food and waterborne diseases worldwide over the past 50 years. The organization is in the process of estimating global foodborne disease incidence, mortality, and disease burden in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by 2025. To ensure Ghana's participation in this process, Mr. Daddey-Adjei stressed the need to enhance the capacities of surveillance and response officers for effective foodborne disease surveillance and reporting. The FDA, with FAO support, has engaged various stakeholders to draft and validate a food safety event surveillance manual. This manual will be used in training to ensure continuous capacity building for an effi cient surveillance and response system with uniformity across various levels. Dr. Akosua Owusu-Sarpong, Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, underscored the serious consequences of foodborne diseases, including fatalities and disabilities. She emphasized the need for timely reporting, investigation, and identification of food contaminants to prevent future contamination. Dr. Benjamin Adjei from FAO noted that, according to WHO, one in ten people worldwide fall ill after consuming contaminated food, with approximately 430,000 deaths annually. He highlighted the workshop's role in harmonizing methodologies to eliminate discrepancies in data interpretation, thus enhancing early detection, reporting, and action to mitigate the impacts of foodborne diseases. Source: Ghana News Agency