Planning Better Health For The Future

Planning Better Health For The Future
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Food safety
Foodborne diseases are preventable, yet they claim over 3000 lives each year. They lead to over 128,000 hospitalizations around the country CITATION CDC181 \l 1033 (CDC, 2018). This is one of the underrated threats to public health, and it can escalate if the safety of the food consumed by the public is not controlled for quality from the farms to the tables. There ought to be a more elaborate system that ensures food safety from the farms, harvesting, processing, packing, distribution, transportation, and storage, to preparing it to be eaten if the afore-described figures are to be reduced. Ensuring that the public consumes safe food can help in reducing the foodborne related illnesses and reduce the cost of health care per individual and nationally. Foodborne illnesses pose greater risks to some groups of people, i.e. Children below four years and adults over 50 years. According to CDC, children below 4 years are four times likely to have laboratory-confirmed illnesses caused by foodborne pathogens and often they are fatal. Adults over 50 years are also at a greater risk because of their reduced immunity, and foodborne illnesses can even lead to death. For a healthy nation, foodborne diseases must be eliminated because they are preventable. It requires a multifaceted intervention scheme that can track food safety from the farm to the table. Food safety can involve an easy task such as washing hands thoroughly with soap and water. Most of the pathogens that lead to the above statistics are caused by infections that can be prevented by washing hands.
Proposal
Handwashing promotion
Had washing promotion is a simple but effective strategy of preventing foodborne illnesses. According to CITATION CDC18 \l 1033 (CDC, 2018), hand washing promotion may reduce the incidence of diarrhea by about 30%. Diarrhea causes many deaths for children below age 5 due to poor awareness of the severity of the problem and ignorance. Promoting hand washing can help the public to be more sensitive when handling food and cutlery to ensure highest standards of hygiene. Hand washing after defecation, after cleaning a baby's bottom, and before preparing and eating food can reduce the risk of diarrhea CITATION Rab13 \l 1033 (Rabbi & Dey, 2013). This essay focuses on how to carry out nationwide campaigns on hand washing and have awareness of the importance of this simple yet effective practice of improving individual and national health status. The campaign is relevant to everyone though the message packaging and delivery method will be adapted for certain groups such as children and minority groups whose message might need to be translated to their mother tongues.
Why handwashing promotion
Hand washing is a simple but effective way of preventing foodborne diseases. The food may be farmed, harvested, processed, transported and it gets contaminated literally when in the hands of the consumer. Though many people understand the importance of washing hands, they do not do it correctly of ignore it altogether which exposes them to risk of contracting foodborne illnesses. Secondly, handwashing is an effective strategy is done in the right way and in the long term....