Sustainable and participatory methods for improving the safety of street-vended foods in Accra, Ghana

Abstract

Throughout the world, urbanisation, the mass movement of people from the rural to urban and near urban areas, has been a continuing trend. Ghana has seen a ten-fold increase in the population of urban areas in the past 10 years. Unfortunately, crushing poverty in the urban areas is normal, with daily per capita incomes well below the population poverty line. In many households the only affordable food is that which is sold and consumed on the street. The street vended food sector provides urban dwellers with a sizable portion of their diet and is a major money earner for the poor, mostly female, workers. Most street food vendors are uneducated and have no knowledge of food hygiene or food handling concepts. It is not surprising then that street-vended foods have been implicated in outbreaks of food borne diseases. A 1994 study initiated, in part by the Ghanaian government, found street-vended foods to harbour potentially dangerous microbiological hazards. They concluded that a strategic programme, designated "best practices", should be implemented to eliminate the food safety hazards. In this follow-up study, it was found that potentially dangerous micro organisms such as Escherichia coli still contaminate much of the street-vended foods sold. For example, fufu sold in all areas of Accra contained large numbers of E. coli with a mean level of 9.6 x 10³, cfu/g. This level of contamination poses a serious public health threat. The follow-up study also found that none of the recommendations regarding "best practices" have been implemented. It is axiomatic that food security must be in place before real progress towards sustainable development can occur. The study concludes that several improvements should be put in place to facilitate action in this area: more funding for the implementation of food security training programmes; more attention to sustainability in projects undertaken; and a need to foster collaborative food security projects, by allowing all stakeholders from the public and private sectors to participate