One out of six Americans are sick each year because of tainted food
In Washington, a report from US officials was released saying that one in every six Americans or equal to 48 million people, have the tendency to be sick every year because of tainted food. The new figures have been revealed by the US officials on Wednesday, presenting the best food-borne pathogens data yet to be released.
According to Thomas Frieden, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control or CDC, progress has already been made for the improvement of understanding the burden of food-borne diseases. Furthermore, Frieden said that it is very unfortunate that too many people have been continually becoming sick from their food intake. Frieden, who released the data himself, said, "These estimates provide valuable information to help CDC and its partners set priorities and further reduce illnesses from food.”The new data methods revealed that nearly 128, 000 people are brought to the hospital because of food-borne diseases. 3,000 of these people die from the illnesses.
This was gathered from the report that has been published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases. The new data methods were actually CDC’s first move to come up with an estimate of the illnesses caused by food eaten in the United States.
It was still in 1999 when the last attempt to come up with a comprehensive estimate was done, and the report that has been shown on Wednesday showed lower figures of sickness due mainly because of the improved data gathering methods.
However, the CDC has been worried for the health authorities. The CDC made an estimate of 9.4 million out of the 48 million of diseases diagnosed yearly were mainly because of food-borne pathogens illnesses. Nearly 80 percent of the illnesses were reported to be results of unspecified agents. Included on the numbers are "known agents without enough data to make specific estimates, agents not yet recognized as causing food-borne illness, and agents not yet discovered," as released from CDC statement.