By Sylvia
The Fort Portal city council is set to issue food hygiene certificates to all the hotel owners, street food vendors and restaurants with an aim of improving on the food hygiene standards in the city.
According to Asaba Edison Ruyonga, the city mayor, the process of issuing certificates is going to be done by the city leadership, in partnership with Kabarole Research and Resource Center nutrition department .
To start up operations, a vendor, will be required to have a license and certificate of hygiene to confirm that their services are safe.
Asaba, further revealed that all street food vendors will have medical tests before they can ably sell or vend food to consumers, to keep away from diseases associated with contaminated food.
“Much as it is good that all categories of people are allowed in the food business, The safety of the foods they give to people must be ensured” Noted Asaba.
Food contamination in Fort Portal
According to Dr. Bernard Bwambale, a nutritionist from KRC, at least 50% of food consumers from Fort Portal are eating contaminated food resulting into food borne diseases.
Dr Bwambale,observed that as the KRC organization, has in a food safety campaign, at least reached out to most of the stakeholders including the food vendors,by sensitizing them on how to avoid food contamination.
A man operating a Chappati Business alongside the Road [FILE photo]
He noted that some food vendors prepare food from polythene bags, operate in dirty areas among others which leads to contamination of food and food borne diseases.
Food borne diseases in Uganda
Ministry of Health in Uganda [MOH], reported in 2019 that about 1.3 million Ugandans are diagnosed with food-borne diseases annually, while 14 per cent of all diseases treated every year are due to food contamination.
Out of these, children under five years of age account for 40% of the food-borne disease.
Some of the most common food borne diseases include Dysentery, Cholera, acute non-bloody diarrhea, persistent non-bloody diarrhea and typhoid.
