Bacterial contamination of food and household stored drinking water in a farmworker community in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Diarrhoeal disease is one of the major problems affecting young children in the tropics. Standards of personal hygiene and public sanitation are low in many communities in developing countries and contamination of foods and drinking water with pathogenic micro-organisms may be an important source of infectious diarrhoea. Not much work has been conducted on the role of contaminated foods and household stored drinking water in the transmission of childhood diarrhoea in developing countries. In a study which was carried out in Gambia,1 it was observed that a very high proportion of food consumed by infants and young children was overgrown with bacteria to a hazardous degree.