Abstract
The disease burden from the lack of biologically safe water to drink has been observed in Ghana, where shallow hand-dug wells, deep-drilled boreholes, and other point sources constitute the rural drinking water supply. The low-cost, easy-to-use “Portable Microbiology Laboratory,” containing both a Colilert field test for the presence or absence of E. coli, as an indicator of fecal contamination, and a Petrifilm field test to enumerate E. coli colony forming units, was used to classify the disease risk of 146 rural drinking water point sources and 21 household water storage units in two districts of Ghana from "low" to "very high," in accordance with World Health Organization standards. The results showed that drinking water from 85% of boreholes was low risk of disease, while only 6% of water from hand-dug wells and other surface point sources was low risk of disease. This verified the strategy of the Ghana government of constructing boreholes to improve the safety of drinking water for the rural population. Use of the Portable Microbiology Laboratory to test water stored in homes, which had been obtained from the nearby borehole, showed generally higher disease risk in the home-stored water than in the water directly from the borehole. The results also demonstrated variations in the disease risk by region and changes in the disease risk for particular point sources over a relatively short period of time. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of the water tests in the Portable Microbiology Laboratory in rural Ghana to rapidly identify drinking water sources that had a high risk of disease.