The latest UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) annual data shows a significant rise in Campylobacter and Salmonella infections in England compared to the previous year.
According to UKHSA “Campylobacter cases have increased by 17.1% from 60,055 in 2023 to 70,352 in 2024, reaching 121.9 reports per 100,000 population. This represents the highest number of cases recorded in the past decade. Adults aged 50 to 79 years account for 44% of all reports. Similarly, Salmonella infections reached a decade high, with a 17.1% increase from 2023, rising from 8,872 cases in 2023 to 10,388 cases in 2024. Children under 10 years old were particularly affected, accounting for 21.5% of cases.”
What is particularly shocking is that these illness, which are sometimes extremely serious, are all entirely preventable.
So what should be done? Apart from trying to reduce Campylobacter presence in poultry (currently around 50% of retail chickens carry it) (Kelbert et al 2025), clearly there needs to be other actions including behaviour change, but will simply telling people about the 4 C’s (cook, chill, clean and avoid cross contamination), together with instructions for “good personal hygiene” and use-by dates actually work? A recent study carried out by the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene suggests that despite intervention with an informative video which actually improved knowledge compared with a control group, these participants were no better able to apply their improved comprehension into reasoned and applied intention to target hygiene at risk moments.
This begs the question then that we need to determine what are the barriers to action so that this can be tackled to provide public resilience to be able to judge times and places to take hygiene actions to break the chain of infection. Instructions to wash hands thoroughly or frequently don’t help without an understanding of when and where the action is most effective.
With a low infectious dose and a longish incubation period Campylobacter is particularly troublesome in the home setting; investigation of causes of sporadic cases is unlikely, meaning it’s hard to pinpoint what is going wrong.
Of course another depressing thought is that the numbers of reported cases are many times lower than reality too. It is estimated that the actual number of cases in the community may be 9.3 times higher than the reported cases (Tam et al 2012).
References
UKHSA 2025 Report: Research and Analysis. Campylobacter data 2015 to 2024. Updated 26 June 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/campylobacter-infection-annual-data/campylobacter-data-2015-to-2024
Kelbert, L, Barmettler, K, Horlbog,JA, Stevens, MJA, Cernela, N, Nüesch-Inderbinen, M, Stephan, R. Campylobacter in Raw Chicken Meat at Retail Level: Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment, Genomic Profiling, and Comparison With Isolates From Human Infections, Journal of Food Protection,Volume 88, Issue 7, 2025, 100540, ISSN 0362-028X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfp.2025.100540.
Tam CC, Rodrigues LC, Viviani L, Dodds JP, Evans MR, Hunter PR, Gray JJ, Letley LH, Rait G, Tompkins DS, O’Brien SJ; IID2 Study Executive Committee ‘Longitudinal study of infectious intestinal disease in the UK (IID2 study): incidence in the community and presenting to general practice’ Gut 2012: volume 61, issue 1, pages 69 to 77
