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.