Every year, 91 million Africans eat poor quality foods that make them sick. This was revealed by the World Health Organisation in a release published this week in the framework of the first World Food Safety day.

According to the institution, 137,000 people die from these sicknesses every year. Those sicknesses are essentially due to poor hygiene, inadequate production and stocking environment, poor education and insufficient legislation on food safety.

Poor access to clean water also contributes to these health problems, in Subsahara Africa mainly. In 2015, for instance, 58% of the 159 million residents only had surface water to drink in the region.

According to the World Bank group, developing countries lose close to $95 billion in economic productivity due to food insecurity while households waste $15 billion in health expenses.

“Most of this health burden and economic loss could be avoided with proper management of food and food products and appropriate hygiene by producers and consumers,” the institution indicates.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou