Health Minister Mohammad Nasim. Star File Photo.

Health Minister Mohammed Nasim today came heavily on Bangladesh's sanitary inspectors for not playing due role in curbing food adulteration and contamination.

"There was a time when we found sanitary inspectors checking food quality in market places. Now they are not seen there. They are busy doing other things," he said.

The sanitary inspectors are as usually posted and are enjoying monthly salaries but they are not working, he said at the 8th One Health Bangladesh Conference organised by the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) at Raowa Convention Hall in Dhaka.

"We have many laws, tough laws, but they have no implementation," Nasim said, exerting his grievance over a sheer lack of coordination among the ministries of health, food and agriculture in this regard.

"In the question of food adulteration, I pass the blame on the food ministry while food ministry puts it on agriculture. That's how things are operated," Nasim said.

He urged the senior officials of the ministries concerned to strongly coordinate among themselves and monitor the field level sanitary inspectors and ensure safe food. 

According to the organisers, the idea of one health is coordinating programmes of the ministries of health, environment, forest, food and agriculture to address the threats of emerging infectious diseases like Nipah virus, Avian influenza and Ebola that originate from animals.

Bangladesh Health Ministry, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organization, Unicef, USAID, icddr,b, and US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, among others, supported it.