The World Health Organization (WHO) has put out a call for experts to inform an updated estimate of the economic impact of foodborne illness at the global, regional, and national levels. The deadline to apply is January 7, 2024.

Specifically, WHO is seeking advice on current economic health valuation practices and their use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and on the availability and representativeness of medical treatment cost data in all countries.

WHO is actively working to update the global estimates of the public health burden of foodborne diseases, considering cases of illness, deaths, and disability-adjusted life year (DALY) loss from foodborne disease globally and at regional and national levels. The WHO technical advisory group, Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) for 2021–2025 is assisting WHO in its estimation process.

Following the first WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases in 2015, the World Bank published a report in 2019, titled, The Safe Food Imperative: Accelerating Progress in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, which included estimates of the economic impact of foodborne diseases globally and regionally. In response to FERG recommendations, the World Bank and WHO agreed to work together to develop estimates of the economic impact of foodborne diseases based on the updated WHO global burden of foodborne disease estimates. The new economic estimates will be national, regional, and global.

The 2019 World Bank publication only included lost productivity in its estimate of the economic impact of foodborne diseases. The World Bank and WHO are interested in exploring the feasibility of using a more comprehensive measure of the economic impact of foodborne illnesses. The World Bank and WHO will hold a meeting of experts in early 2024 on the feasibility of alternative economic measures. Any measure must be consistent with sound economic theory and feasible to implement globally, regionally, and nationally. The meeting will be held virtually.

The objective of the meeting is to discuss possible methodologies to quantify the economic burden of foodborne diseases based on the updated global burden estimates that are planned to be made available in 2025.

WHO is seeking experts to participate in an online call to advise the World Bank and WHO on feasible and appropriate methodology to estimate the economic burden of foodborne diseases globally, regionally, and nationally. WHO is seeking experts with expertise in health economics, particularly in economic valuation of health outcomes. WHO is interested both in experts with knowledge of theory and practice of monetary health valuation, and experts with practical knowledge of the availability of cost of health treatment data in LMICs.

Update, October 15, 2025: WHO told Food Safety News that the release of the new foodborne disease estimates will be delayed until 2026. “The official consultation with WHO member states, during which each country had the opportunity to review and comment on its national estimates, was completed this summer, and we are now including additional national input to refine the estimates further. So, the process to finalize the estimates is already well underway,” a WHO spokesperson said. The organization is undergoing a major restructuring, including budget cuts, which may have affected the disease burden estimates timeline.