Food safety surveillance in Bhutan, conducted from 2019 to 2021

Food-borne diseases are caused by a wide range of microbiological and chemical or toxins with different levels of severity, which range from mild sickness to life-threatening illness. The World Health Organization estimates that the global burden of foodborne diseases is 420000 mortality and at least 1 in 10 people falls ill every year from eating contaminated food. African and South-East Asia Regions have the highest burden of foodborne diseases. Several devastating outbreaks of foodborne diseases have been reported in Bhutan. This report presents the food safety surveillance data for food samples collected between June 2019 to December 2021 from five Districts (Paro, Thimphu, Phuentsholing, Gelephu and Monggar). Ready-to-eat food samples were collected by Food inspectors and samples were shipped to Royal Centre for Disease Control (RCDC) maintaining a cold chain during transportation. The results show that 12.36% (n=78) of food samples were nonacceptable due to indicator test organism contamination and 8.71% (n=55) of the RTE food samples were unacceptable due to the presence of the pathogenic organism. The common type of pathogen isolated was Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus cereus, and low detection of Aeromonas and Shigella spp. The seasonality pattern of food contamination shows that most contamination occurred higher during hot and wet seasons. The findings demonstrate that RTE is likely to cause foodborne illness. Therefore, education on personal hygiene, good manufacturing practices and food safety aspect would improve food quality thereby reducing the incidence of foodborne incidences.