Public health concerns for food contamination in Ghana: A scoping review.

Nutrition is sturdily and rapidly becoming the foremost determinant of health in today's Sars-Cov-2 and climate change ravaged world. While safe food sustains life, contamination obliterates its values and could result in death and short to long term morbidity. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore food contamination in Ghana, between 2001-2022. Using Arksey and O'Malley's procedure, a systematic literature search from PubMed, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Scopus, Emeralds Insight, Google Scholar, and Google was carried out. Following the inclusion criteria, 40 published and grey literature were covered in this review. The review revealed the following: Studies on food contamination involving Greater Accra, Ashanti, Central, and Eastern Regions alone account for over 50% of the total number of such studies conducted in Ghana; regulators failed in enforcing regulations, monitoring and supervision; managers failed to provide adequate infrastructure and facilities. The most common food safety risks of public health concern are: i) micro-organisms (E. coli/faecal coliforms, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella spp, Bacillus cereus, and Viral hepatitis); ii) drugs (Amoxicillin, Chlortetracycline, Ciprofloxacin, Danofloxacin, and Doxycycline) and; iii) chemicals (Chlorpyrifos). Salad, vegetables, sliced mango, meat pie, and snail khebab are of high public health risks. The following deductions were made from the review: Highly contaminated food results in death, short to long term morbidity, economic loss, and threatens to displace Ghana's efforts at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2. Thus, Government must resource key regulatory bodies to enhance their operational capacity, regulators must foster collaboration in monitoring and supervision of food vendors, and managers of food service outlets must provide adequate facilities to engender food safety culture.

Microbial contamination in palm oil selected from markets in major cities of Ghana.

The study assessed the microbiological contamination of palm oil sold in the major cities of Ghana's oil-producing regions. Seventy samples (10 samples from each region) were randomly collected in sterile bottles and transported aseptically to the laboratory for analysis. AOAC standard methods and procedures were used to isolate and identify bacteria and fungi based on their cultural, morphological, and biochemical characteristics. The results were analysed using One-Way ANOVA with 5% significance level, using GraphPad Prism, version 5.0 for windows, and the results presented in graph and tables. The quality of oils was moderately good with total Coliform counts of 2.0×101 ± 6.03 CFU/g and 1.72×103 ± 6.66 CFU/g. Microbial counts from the selected regions were statistically different at P < 0.05. Findings established the absence of yeast and moulds in the oils in addition to extremely pathogenic Coliforms such as Salmonella and Shigella species. Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were highlighted as dominant coliforms found in the oils after the assay. The overall findings suggest that the oil from the Greater Accra region was of best quality and safest for consumption. Oil samples from the Central and Ashanti regions were of relatively poor quality recording the highest dominant coliforms. Nonetheless, the presence of the isolated potentially harmful microorganisms in the palm oil samples points to hygienic issues and poses a relative health hazard to consumers.