Strengthening food safety in Uzbekistan

WHO/Europe, through its food safety programme and its Uzbekistan Country Office, carries out integrated activities to assist Uzbekistan in strengthening food safety.

National capacity has improved in the areas of foodborne disease prevention, development of integrated food safety systems, collaboration among public health, food, veterinary and agriculture sectors, and preparedness to respond to foodborne disease risks including antimicrobial resistance related to food safety.

• Targeted trainings using the “WHO five keys to safer food” helped improve food safety and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases. They addressed primary schools and kindergartens, food handlers and street vendors, public catering, as well as television programmes for the general public. Training materials, including a manual, poster and a brochure, were adopted and translated into Uzbek. The “WHO five keys to safer food” training programme was introduced into the training curricula of public services colleges and medical institutes in the capital Tashkent, the Khorezm region and the Republic of Karakalpakstan. The programme was also included in the training curricula of the Institute of Health in Tashkent, which provides training to catering staff.
• Several workshops on food safety for the central Asian republics were held in Uzbekistan to encourage the development of integrated food safety systems and intersectoral collaboration. They brought together national experts from the public health, food, veterinary and agriculture sectors of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
• A national event was organized on World Health Day 2011 in Tashkent, to raise awareness on antimicrobial resistance from a food safety perspective among the health and veterinary sectors, food and pharmaceutical industry, consumer’s associations and mass media.
• A five-day workshop for the central Asian republics was held in Almaty in 2012 to build national capacity in food safety and to develop an action plan to improve food safety. Participants learned how to improve cross-sectoral collaboration and action at regional and national levels along the whole food-production chain, and how to improve country response to foodborne disease risks, including antimicrobial resistance related to food safety. The workshop was organized by WHO/Europe through the WHO Global Foodborne Infections Network (GFN) in collaboration with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• According to the action plan developed during the 2012 Almaty workshop, CDC and WHO agreed to conduct joint activities on antimicrobial resistance from a food safety perspective in the central Asian republics with a focus on Uzbekistan, and a national centre for disease control was established in Tashkent. Updates and modern approaches to address antimicrobial resistance from a food safety perspective were presented in a joint CDC/WHO national workshop held in June 2013. A national GFN training course focusing on Campylobacter, Salmonella and related antimicrobial resistance will be organized jointly by the CDC and WHO in autumn 2013.
• Effective participation in the work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and on the implementation of Codex standards and guidelines is facilitated by WHO/Europe’s continuous support to the Ministry of Health.