A Comparative Study Between Food-Borne Outbreaks Two or More Persons and Individual Cases by Using Statistics of Japan
KFDA compiles the statistical data of food poisoning outbreaks two or more persons since 2002in Korea and release them to the public on the web. There is a gap of outbreak number between the real situation and the reports. To reduce the gap, addition of sporadic individual case of food poisoning may be one of the solution method. The statistical data of Japan where food consumption pattern is similar to Korea, were used in this study to compare the ratio and the pattern between the outbreak cases two or more persons and individual cases. By doing so,the data of Japan regarding to outbreak cases two or more persons will be comparable to that of Korea. The data of 2002 and 2003 in Japan showed that sporadic individual cases were 43.3% in the total food poisoning cases. The individual cases occurred highly in unknown places (90-92.3%) and home (6.2-8.5%) whileas the outbreaks two or more persons occurred mostly in the place of restaurants (46.6-50.1%) and inns (9.2-9.8%). The food-borne pathogens attributed to the individual cases were C. jejuni (51.9%), Salmonella spp. (35.3%), and V. parahaemolyticus (9.8%)while those to the outbreak cases two or more persons were norovirus (31.3%), Salmonella spp. (20.8%), C. jejuni (15.5%) in Japan. The data of 2002-2009 between Korea and Japan showed the outbreak case report rate was 1:1.5based on the total population number.