Food poisoning in the municipalities of Qasr Khiar and Qara Bulli: a survey of health centers

الملخص

The current study aimed to identify the phenomenon of food poisoning, its prevalence and impact on the disease cases that passed through the health centers in the municipalities of Qasr Al-Akhyar and Al-Qarabulli, especially after the talk about the presence of many cases of food poisoning in some Libyan cities on social media pages and some media channels. This study focused on the category of doctors, pharmacists and laboratory technicians as they are the most knowledgeable and aware of such cases. This study relied on the information collected through the questionnaire distributed to the aforementioned category in the health centers of the two municipalities. The results were extracted through the questionnaire, which indicated the presence of widespread food poisoning cases in the two municipalities, and their effects varied between mild, moderate and severe. The spread of food poisoning cases was due to poor food control and lack of consumer awareness. The results also showed that summer is the season with the most frequent cases of food poisoning, perhaps one of the reasons for this is the spoilage of food due to the frequent power outages in recent years. Accordingly, we reached many results in this study, through which we must clarify the importance of preserving consumer health by providing protection and control over all food sources, whether local or imported, while urging consumer awareness. The dangers of contaminated food are being raised through official media channels and social media pages.