Food Safety : Public Health Education and Training

Dr MP Cariappa, Med Cdt Ravi Kumar, Med Cdt Nikhil Unnava, AFMC, Pune, India
[mpcariappa@gmail.com]
Introduction
Occurrence of foodborne disease remains a
significant health issue in both developed and
developing countries.
Current UG and PG medical education in
India is focused solely on nutrition and on
managing cases of food borne illnesses and
does not emphasize on other aspects of
prevention.
Various aspects of food safety are required to
be known to doctors in the practice of Public
Health today.

Action Plan
The initial plan was to implement and
evaluate a food safety health education and
training program in the medical college
cookhouses.
Subsequently, it was decided to conduct
training and orientation of MPH and MD
students on food safety, as also a brief
module for undergraduate students during
their Community Medicine training.
Program Content
Simple toolkits and procedures were
incorporated in the program including:
Water safety testing
Food handler hygiene evaluation
Hand and nasal swabs
Nail bed scraping for microscopy
Health education
Food safety training for food handlers

Needs Assessment
Situational analysis with peer review
Key Informant Interviews
Focused Group Discussions
Syllabus review of MBBS, MD and MPH
Target Audience
While the focus of the campaign was originally
on educating the food handlers and their
supervisors, the target audience for the training
and orientation program component evolved to
include undergraduate MBBS students in the
middle of their college education, postgraduate
Residents of the Dept of Community Medicine,
paramedical personnel under training at the
Dept of Community Medicine and MPH
candidates from the University.

Surakshit Paakshaala Abhiyan

has been operationalized since Aug 2013
Results
A felt need to conduct a focused and sustained campaign within the
Medical College to promote food safety by adoption of best practices
and also motivate all food handlers at the various cook houses, and
their supervisors to assure food safety for the clientele.
Syllabus review revealed that there was not much emphasis on food
safety, as the thrust was mostly on nutrition.
- Food Safety Training Module for Postgraduate MD Residents and
MPH candidates
-conducted for 02 batches each.
- Training Module for undergraduate students in III MBBS Part I
-conducted for 02 batches
- Onsite training for cookhouse personnel -conducted every quarter
- Training for paramedical (BPMT) trainees - for three batches.

Introductory modules have been successfully concluded

for batches of MD and MPH students through a
structured and interactive program, with hands on
evaluations of food safety using checklists and table top
exercises.
Health Education is a vital part of the role every doctor must
perforce perform in society, accordingly, our program had
envisaged development and display of suitably customized
food safety posters with utilization of mobile display materials
to facilitate the onsite training of food handlers including
orientation of their supervisors.
Partnership
The Dept of Microbiology of the Medical College had
been liaised with to be responsible for conduct of training
of various categories of students in laboratory techniques
and also the required food sampling procedures.

The modules included food establishment safety evaluation /

inspections (as required by the Food Safety Standards Act
and internal organizational Orders) with methodology of
evaluation including verbal dissection and utilization of an
observational toolkit based multi parameter evaluation.

References
1. Mead PS, Slutsker L, Dietz V, McCaig LF, Bresee JS, Shapiro C, Griffin PM, Tauxe RV. Food-Related Illness and Death in the
United States. Emerg Infect Dis. 1999 Sep-Oct; 5(5): 607625. doi: 10.3201/eid0505.990502
2. WHO. Five keys to Safer food Manual. 2006 http://www.who.int/foodsafety/ publications/consumer/manual_keys.pdf
3. WHO. Beijing Declaration On Food Safety. 2007 http://www.who.int/foodsafety/ fs_management/meetings/Beijing_decl.pdf
4. WHO. Food safety in developing countries building capacity. Weekly Epidemiological Record 2004, 79 (18), 173180.
5. Manual of Food Safety Management System, FSS Act, 2006. http://www.fssai.gov.in/
6. WHO. WHO global strategy for food safety : safer food for better health. 2002
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/general/en/strategy_en.pdf