LAGOS, Nigeria — The World Health Organisation released new data on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, showing that unsafe food causes 1.5 million deaths and 866 million illnesses worldwide every year.
Okay News reports that the World Health Organisation identified chemical contamination as the primary cause of fatalities, responsible for 73 per cent of deaths from contaminated food in 2021.
“Unsafe food has always been a major public health concern, but until now, we lacked the bigger picture of its staggering human and economic toll. These new estimates change that,” Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said.
The study found that inorganic arsenic and lead were linked to more than one million deaths in a single year, while foodborne bacteria, viruses, and parasites accounted for approximately 860 million illness cases in 2021.
Children under five make up nearly one-third of all foodborne diseases despite representing nine per cent of the global population, and geographically, Africa and Southeast Asia account for nearly three-quarters of all foodborne illnesses and 60 per cent of global deaths.
The health agency estimated that foodborne diseases resulted in 310 billion dollars in lost productivity in 2021, which rises to 647 billion dollars when adjusted for living cost differences between countries.
“The data show that foodborne diseases are not only persistent but are being made worse by climate change, which increases contamination risks, and by antimicrobial resistance, which makes infections harder to treat. We cannot tackle these threats alone,” Yuki Minato, a technical officer for food safety and senior author of the study published in The Lancet Global Health, said.
