The Ashanti Regional Office of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), has initiated steps to engage schoolchildren on the need to prioritise food safety.

The goal is to sensitise the young ones to appreciate the importance of eating healthy food and how best to handle them to avoid contamination as part of a broad strategy to reduce foodborne diseases.

In line with this, officials from the regional office of the Authority have visited the Ellen Gould White Preparatory School at Adum to engage the pupils on food safety and the dangers associated with tobacco use.

They were educated on practices that exposed food to contamination and how to preserve food to ensure they are wholesome for consumption.

Ms. Mabel Adwoa Nyarko, a Senior Regulatory Officer of the FDA who led the discussion, admonished the pupils to be wary of anything they consumed in order not to fall sick.

She said food was supposed to provide them energy and nutrients required to grow as children and must not be the reason to visit the hospital.

“Make sure you always wash your hands under running water before you eat so that you don’t contaminate the food with germs and other bacteria,” she implored the kids.

She reminded them that eating healthy food would nourish their bodies and stimulate their growth and charged them to adopt healthy eating habits both at home and in school.

Buying food from vendors in a filthy environment, she said, could also expose them to foodborne diseases and entreated them not to patronise such vendors in their own interest.

Mr. Daniel Yaw Geraldo, the Public Relations Officer, Ashanti FDA, said it was important to target pupils at the basic level of education as part of public sensitisation on food safety so that they would grow up conscious of the importance of food hygiene.

He said equipping the children with the right information on food safety would empower them to do the right things even when their parents or guardians were not available to supervise them.

On tobacco, Mr. Geraldo admonished adults to desist from sending children to buy cigarettes, saying that, such practice could subtly introduce minors to smoking.

Pubs and other entertainment facilities must have designated areas for cigarette and shisha smokers as prescribed by the Public Health Act, to protect non-users of tobacco, he stated.

Mr. Osei Assibey, Proprietor of the school, applauded the FDA for taking such education to children at that level, saying that it was the way to go as a country in building a culture of food safety amongst the population.