Pit Latrines: A Noninvasive Sampling Strategy to Assess Fecal Pathogen Occurrence in Low Resource Communities

Limited understanding of disease in low resource communities continues to hamper improvements in health. We evaluated household pit latrine sampling as a non-invasive approach to investigate important fecal pathogens such as Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium spp. in impoverished communities where health-seeking behavior limits the sensitivity of health facility-based surveillance. Fecal samples were collected from pit latrines in randomly selected households and from patients presenting to the only hospital in the region during the same time periods. Samples were tested with a commercially available ELISA. Giardia household prevalence was 28.7% in 2016 and 48.4% in 2017, while individual samples from hospital submission had a Giardia prevalence of 2.4% in 2016 and 8.0% in 2017. Cryptosporidium was only found in one household. Results suggest that pit latrine surveillance for fecal-borne infections provide course estimates of community infection levels that are unbiased by health seeking behaviors and allow surveillance of vulnerable sectors of a population.