Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2013 Jul 8.
Quality of Piped and Stored Water in Households with Children Under Five Years of Age Enrolled in the Mali Site of the Global Enteric Multi-Center Study (GEMS).
Baker KK, Sow S, Kotloff KL, Nataro JP, Farag TH, Tamboura B, Doumbia M, Sanogo D, Diarra D, O’Reilly CE, Mintz E, Panchalingam S, Wu Y, Blackwelder WC, Levine MM.
Center for Vaccine Development, Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland; Centre pour le Développement des Vaccins du Mali (CVD-Mali), Centre National d’Appui à la Lutte Contre la Maladie (ex-Institut Marchoux), Bamako, Mali; Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia.
Abstract – Water, sanitation, and hygiene information was collected during a matched case-control study of moderate and severe diarrhea (MSD) among 4,096 children < 5 years of age in Bamako, Mali. Primary use of piped water (conditional odds ratio [cOR] = 0.45; 0.34-0.62), continuous water access (cOR = 0.30; 0.20-0.43), fetching water daily (cOR = 0.77; 0.63-0.96), and breastfeeding (cOR = 0.65; 0.49-0.88) significantly reduced the likelihood of MSD. Fetching water in > 30 minutes (cOR = 2.56; 1.55-4.23) was associated with MSD.
Piped tap water and courier-delivered water contained high (> 2 mg/L) concentrations of free residual chlorine and no detectable Escherichia coli. However, many households stored water overnight, resulting in inadequate free residual chlorine (< 0.2 mg/L) for preventing microbial contamination. Coliforms and E. coli were detected in 48% and 8% of stored household water samples, respectively. Although most of Bamako’s population enjoys access to an improved water source, water quality is often compromised during household storage.
