Drinking Water from Dug Wells in Rural Ghana — Salmonella Contamination, Environmental Factors, and Genotypes

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Denise Myriam Dekker²  Ralf Krumkamp²  Nimako Sarpong¹  Hagen Frickmann⁶  Kennedy Gyau Boahen¹  Michael Frimpong¹  Renate Asare¹  Richard Larbi¹  Ralf Matthias Hagen⁶  Sven Poppert⁷  Wolfgang Rabsch³  Florian Marks⁵  Yaw Adu-Sarkodie⁴  Jürgen May² 

[1] Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research, Kumasi, Ghana; E-Mails:;Research Group Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Straße 74, Hamburg 20359, Germany; E-Mails:;Robert Koch Institute, FG11, National Reference Centre for Salmonella and other Bacterial Enteric Pathogens, Burgstraße 37, Wernigerode 38855, Germany; E-Mail:;Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Accra Road, Kumasi, Ghana; E-Mail:;International Vaccine Institute, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, South Korea; E-Mail:;Department of Tropical Medicine, German Armed Forces Hospital of Hamburg, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Straße 74, Hamburg 20359, Germany; E-Mails:;Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, Rudolf-Buchheimstraße 6, Gießen 35392, Germany; E-Mail:

关键词: Salmonella;    disease transmission;    drinking water;    dug wells;    risk factor;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph120403535

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Salmonellosis is an important but neglected disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Food or fecal-oral associated transmissions are the primary cause of infections, while the role of waterborne transmission is unclear. Samples were collected from different dug wells in a rural area of Ghana and analyzed for contamination with bacteria, and with Salmonella in particular. In addition, temporal dynamics and riks factors for contamination were investigated in 16 wells. For all Salmonella isolates antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed, serovars were determined and strains from the same well with the same serovar were genotyped. The frequency of well water contamination with Gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria was 99.2% (n = 395). Out of 398 samples, 26 (6.5%) tested positive for Salmonella spp. The serovar distribution was diverse including strains not commonly isolated from clinical samples. Resistance to locally applied antibiotics or resistance to fluoroquinolones was not seen in the Salmonella isolates. The risk of Salmonella contamination was lower in wells surrounded by a frame and higher during the rainy season. The study confirms the overall poor microbiological quality of well water in a resource-poor area of Ghana. Well contamination with Salmonella poses a potential threat of infection, thus highlighting the important role of drinking water safety in infectious disease control.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.