Practical surveillance of water quality in a low-resource setting: a pilot program.
Diarrheal diseases represent a tremendous health burden in low-resource countries affecting child mortality. The main sources of diarrheal diseases are water source contamination and fecal-oral transmission. A major obstacle in disease control is the ability to identify and monitor water source quality for potential infectious contamination. We explore a technique for real-time surveillance of coliform bacteria contamination in water sources which is of modest cost and does not require electricity. Specifically, we used body heat as a source for thermal regulation in contrast to traditional incubation for the enumeration of coliforms on 3M petrifilm™ Escheriachia coli/coliform count plates. Our data support that the body heat incubation technique is a promising strategy for water source surveillance in low resource settings.
School of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, United States. kenneth.chang@uth.tmc.edu
Kenneth
K
Chang
Christopher
C
Greeley
D058491:Bacterial Load / Q000379:methods*; D003906:Developing Countries; D004755:Enterobacteriaceae / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D013696:Temperature; D014871:Water Microbiology; D060753:Water Quality / Q000592:standards*