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Dubai to contain food poisoning at source

By Sajila Saseendran DUBAI - Dubai is joining an international laboratory network as part its efforts to contain food poisoning from the source of outbreaks, officials said on 
Wednesday.

Asia Abdulwahab Alraeesi who heads the Food Studies and Planning at the Food Control Department of Dubai Municipality ( DM ) announced that the emirate will soon be part of the PulseNet International that monitors food-borne bacteria through their DNA fingerprints.

The network is coordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with the Association of Public Health 
Laboratories.

Presenting a paper on the 'Present and the Future of Food Outbreak Investigation and Surveillance in Dubai' at the seventh Dubai International Food Safety Conference (DIFSC), Alraeesi said tying up with PulseNet will help Dubai in tracking the most common pathogens' serotype to the source or to the epidemic geographical areas and to take appropriate preventive actions against newly detected serotypes around the world.

Dr Peter Gerner-Smidt, a speaker at the conference and a member of the PulseNet International Steering Committee said the network offers real time surveillance resulting in early detection and warnings.

"If you routinely use PulseNet to detect outbreaks then you will detect many more outbreaks and you will also be able to solve them to derive what the causes are and using that information you can make food much safer," he told Khaleej Times. "In Dubai, you import most of your foods. So I would think that a lot of the problems you are going to detect here will be present in other places in the world. So they will need to work with the PulseNet Middle East and Pulse Net International to make the investigation 
international.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, the Municipality 's Senior Food Studies and Surveys Officer Bobby Krishna said DM would be working in association with its counterpart in Abu Dhabi and the health authorities in both the emirates for becoming active partners in the network.

"We will be looking at adopting a few laboratory practices which make organism detection much more possible and specific. With PulseNet, you will be able to look at not just the name of the bacteria, but the genetic construction of the bacteria," he said.

This is particularly important for the country since it is heavily dependent on imported food, which may the source of food borne diseases reported here.

"If there is an outbreak or if a person gets sick with a pathogen, using PulseNet, we can find the exact nature of that particular organism and find out where the organism is more prevalent and track it to the source. Then we can know what food is the source of the outbreak, where it is coming from to Dubai or the UAE and we can control the use of the product. That is how it helps in surveillance."

He said training programmes would be organised soon to equip the officials concerned in making use of the laboratory facilities here to be part of the network.

Alraeesi said DM would also coordinate with local and federal partners to test more pathogens and chemicals in food and human samples and would adopt standardised molecular sub-typing techniques of bacteria causing food-borne diseases.

"Increasing the frequency of food items sampling which are imported from suspected and contaminated sources and communicating and following up with suppliers and government representatives regarding precautions will also be adopted to enhance the risk assessment measures for imported and re-exported food items," she added.

© Khaleej Times 2012