Food vendors and our health

By Doreen Hammond
I have not gone near my favourite, goat meat for days now. Goat khebab used to be a delicacy for me especially, when it is spiced with pepper, and that groundnut powder mix with slices of onions.
The smoke that usually engulfed me as I stood and pointed at those I wanted was never a deterrent. Neither the look of the sharp knife used by the seller to cut the meat up in pieces as I waited impatiently to put some in my mouth was nor the fact that the khebab seller touched my khebab with bare hands as he served me.
But alas, as the saying goes koloo ko ye dwaa mli ni moo oso , translated from Ga—there is an animal in the bush that catches the fox!
The floods which caused havoc to lives and property in Accra and specifically the Kwame Nkrumah Circle – Odawna areas on October 25 , also touched animals. When the storm was over, many sheep and goats lay dead. As people began to salvage the few things left and to dry out their clothes in every available space, brisk business started – big sheep and goat carcasses were sold for GH¢5 each.
There are many restaurants , chop bars and khebab joints around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, specifically the Neoplan Station area, and though I cannot prove that the carcasses headed for these places, my imagination has been telling me so many things that is threatening my long time friendship with Khebab.
Not too long ago, I had to end a similar friendship with Hausa koko. I realised that the woman who stayed next door in an uncompleted house as a squatter, without access to potable water , no bath house and toilet was the same woman who sold the hausa koko by the road side—and she prepared the koko under terribly unhygienic conditions.
Unfortunately hers is not an isolated case. Day after day, new food vendors and hawkers appear in all parts of the city . They just put a table in the open or erect a small kiosk where they like and come out with fanciful inscriptions such as Okumtsola fast food and presto they are in business! They sell anything from fufu , banku, fried rice and chicken to waakye , and their patronage is huge.
In addition, fruit hawkers are readily available everywhere to sell. Sliced watermelons, pawpaws and pineapples are hawked in the streets and even on the sun in traffic. Sad thing is that some of these fruits are picked straight from the ground , are not washed and sliced with knives wiped but not cleaned with detergent and water.
The traffic in Accra makes it almost not practical for many workers to cook and take to work as some leave home as early as 4.30a.m.
It is a fact that many people do not cook at home but patronise restaurants , food and fruit vendors as a matter of convenience. How is the individual protected from diseases? How is the individual assured of safe food? How is this extended across the length and breadth of the country?
Who checks such food vendors whether in small or big restaurants or in the open? How many of these food vendors have the blessing of the Metropolitan and Public Health Department (MPHD) of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to sell food?
In addition to this, the operations of most of these food joints have added up to the many illegal structures that litter many parts of Accra. Who is checking this worrisome situation?
The Director of the MPHD of the AMA, Dr S.A. Boateng says the department has found it difficult to determine the number of food vendors there are in the metropolis because “ today they are there as food vendors , tomorrow they are not”.
But according to figures given by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, (FAO), there are 65,000 food vendors in the Accra metropolis.
The department is therefore trying to target 85 per cent of an estimated 65,000 food vendors for health screening which is a mandatory requirement for food handlers/vendors in the metropolis.
The department’s environmental health officers are supposed to go round the metropolis checking food handlers for health certificates which they are given after going through health screening organised by the MPHD in collaboration with the Microbiology Department of the University of Ghana Medical School.
Hitherto, the MPHD allowed food handlers to do the required laboratory tests for worm infestation and typhoid fever at any laboratory of their choice but had to stop because it realised that some of the laboratories in the metropolis were substandard ( unqualified technicians and lack of reagents) and therefore issued unreliable laboratory results.
One of the challenges of the MPHD is that it has only 150 environmental officers to check food handlers when the department needs about 500 of them as recommended by the Ministry of Local Government. This has made the job of the MPHD quite difficult.
The World Health Organisation however recommends one environmental officer for every 700 people. The Accra metropolis has a population of five million people.
According to Dr Boateng, the department also has problems with mobility presented by the lack of transport for its work. He however suggests that some staff could be trained under the National Youth Employment Programme and the National |Service scheme to augment the staff of the MPHD.
For food hawkers like the army of them we see in the streets of Accra, especially in traffic hawking, Dr Boateng says the department does not screen them because it is against the bye-laws of the assembly to hawk food in the streets. The reality however is that these hawkers are on the streets selling and they may be transmitting all sorts of diseases to the innocent consumer. There is therefore the urgent need to either screen them or stop them!
Dr Sylvester Achio, Senior Lecturer, Department of Science Laboratory Technology of the Accra Polytechnic says the risk we stand by patronising foods prepared and sold under unhygienic conditions are many.
He said that apart from the germs/micro-organisms which are likely to settle on foods when exposed to the air and cause diseases, we also need to worry about foods prepared in unhygienic conditions because of dysentery, cholera and other stomach disorders.
He explained that food prepared and bought near stagnant debris or water, toilets and gutters or general insanitary conditions are likely to contain micro-organisms and faecal contaminants like E-Coli especially when the culture of hand washing is absent.
For fruits, Dr Achio explains that when exposed to heat without their outer coating, the biochemical reactions that take place cause faster spoilage because of microbial attacks. Therefore the person who eats such fruits is likely to have health problems.
Dr Achio strongly advocates that both food handlers and consumers maintain basic hygiene including hand washing and covering food and being very particular about the environment in which they cook and buy food from.
Food vendors are serving a very important role in society. They are a savior to many workers who do not have the opportunity of eating at home and give us an option when we do not want to enter the kitchen. We also get to entertain ourselves and socialise at some of these food joints. The government therefore needs to ensure that they do as more good than harm. The situation we have now, doesn’t bode well for our health.