Foodborne Parasites

Foodborne Parasites

Foodborne parasites affect millions of people life quality to negative way all around the world, even cause to death. In addition, they cause significant economic losses by disrupting animal health. Most of them consist helminth and protozoa which are zoonotic character. These parasite’s different forms which cause various and severe diseases, are transmitted to humans by food and water. Consumption uncooked or undercooked products, high demand of ready-to-eat foods, increasing the worldwide popularity of traditional and ethnic meals which prepared with raw foods led to spreading of diseases caused by these parasites. Also these parasites incidence at different geographies increase with situations in our developing world such as increasing food and animal trade, climate changes, global warming, frequent occurrence of natural disasters. A technical guide has developed by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO) and World Health Organization(WHO) with the experts and they have determined life-threatening 24 important parasite with defining some criteria. The 10 parasites that have the greatest global impact are, respectively, from helminths; Taenia solium(1), Echinococcus granulosus(2), Echinococcus multilocularis(3), Trichinella spiralis(7), Opisthorchiidae family(8), Ascaris spp.(9) and from protozoa; Toxoplasma gondii(4), Cryptosporidium spp.(5), Entamoeba histolytica(6), Trypanosoma cruzi(10) have been reported. Turkey is a country that has plenty of fresh/salt water resources, high fish production and consumption. Therefore parasites belong to the Anisakidae family which is in the 17th rank at this list, have high probability for occurance in our whole country. The species of this family will be explained in addition to these ten parasites which are mentioned in this review. The purpose of this review is explaining these parasites situations in our country and worldwide, ways of their transmission to human, how they affect human health, and emphasize the topic importance with the framework of one health approach.