Summertime is the favourable weather condition for bacteria, virus, and other parasites to breed, making food more vulnerable to further deterioration. This has resulted in an increased risk of food poisoning.

Currently, a total of over 40 patients with acute gastritis are being treated at the Tropical Medicine Department of the Da Nang General Hospital due to the use of poor quality food. All of them show such food poisoning symptoms as nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramps, plus fever.

According to the hospital's doctors, toxic caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances entering the body through contaminated food will reduce the human body's resistance, and lead to many other risks.

Mr Nguyen Minh Tien, Deputy Head of the municipal Food Safety Management Board, said his unit has recently focused on checking food safety and hygiene at tourist sites, as well as warning about an increased risk of food poisoning, especially street food, amongst local residents and visitors.

“Many training courses on how to prevent food poisoning, and how to identify poor quality food have been organised for managers and staff of hotels and resorts across the city”, he remarked.

Heed has been paid to regularly taking food samples at food establishments in order to test them for microbiological criteria in order to timely detect poor quality food.

Mr Tien advised local residents not to buy too much fresh food, as well as not to store cooked food too long in fridge, in a bid to ensure food safety and prevent food poisoning during the summer.

Such prepackaged foods spring rolls and ‘cha bo’ (grilled meat roll) with adequate labels as prescribed should be purchased at reputable establishments.

With regard to ways to prevent from food poisoning, doctors underlined the importance of washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water (warm or cold), and drying them before handling food, after handling raw food.

It's especially important to keep raw meat away from ready-to-eat foods because these foods won't be cooked before eating them, so any bacteria that get onto the foods from the raw meat won't be killed.

Last, but not least, it is harmful to eat cooked food that has been in the fridge for a long time because bacteria can still grow even at refrigerator temperatures.

As suffering from such symptoms as nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea and abdominal pain many times, people should immediately go to the nearest medical facility to be diagnosed and treated in time.