Evaluation of initial and periodic examinations of food handlers in military facilities

Food handlers are an important factor for food-borne diseases in the military units where food is prepared and served by a single responsible subunit. To prevent food-borne diseases there is laboratory and hospital based periodical examination procedure. But it is not effective. For example; 153,012 of 417,163 chest radiograms, 107,543 of 1,087,056 urinalyses, and 198,135 of 336,314 outpatient examination for infectious diseases were for periodical examination but just only 3148, 318, and 7011 are positive respectively. Based on our findings current evaluation procedure of food handler in Turkish Armed Forces should be improved. A new procedure that would makes the periodic examinations more effective, lowers the laboratory costs, and lowers the workload of the military hospitals was proposed.