Water treatment surveillance system to help combat gastroenteritis

Oct 06, 2015 News

Seasonal gastroenteritis outbreaks in some remote communities are expected to become a thing of the past or, at least, be considerably reduced in the very near future.

Marlan Cole, GAFDD Director

This, of course, will be dependent on the successful implementation of a water treatment surveillance system which is set to be introduced shortly in remote areas of the country where people are predisposed to gastroenteritis.
The project is one that is being spearheaded by the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department (GAFDD), with support from the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO).
Food and Drug Director, Mr Marlan Cole, who, during a recent interview, told this publication that in order to fast track the initiative a five-day training programme was recently held.
The training programme, which also focused ýon a number of issues including food chemistry and food microbiology, saw the attendance of several regional environmental officers and inspectors, some of whom were drawn from remote areas of the country.
With support from PAHO, it is expected that the efforts soon to be employed will allow for a marked improvement in the water quality in the remote areas.
“What we are aiming to do is to ensure that there is constant monitoring, and we will feed that information into a database to see if and when there is trouble to submit samples to our laboratory, so that we can see the trend and recognise if there is a problem with the water quality that people drink and use,” informed Cole.
Training therefore, represented the initial stage of efforts to implement a long term solution to a problem that has been constantly surfacing – seasonal gastroenteritis.
The renewed efforts at working towards improved water quality is premised on a recommendation of the World Health Organisation which has emphasised the need for countries to put in place a water system and safety plan.
“In Guyana we have an abundance of water but if it is safe and accessible to all is another question…” said the GAFDD Director who however disclosed that a water treatment surveillance system was long under consideration.
“This is linked to a programme where we distributed water testing kits to the inspectors in the regions earlier this year,” informed Cole.
That programme, he explained, was intended to prepare inspectors to engage in activities to quickly acquire water quality information to be fed into a database for analysis.
The inspectors were exposed to training on how to use portable Del Agua water-testing kits that were donated by PAHO.
“We have trained them (inspectors) and we have distributed the kits now because we didn’t want to just distribute but we wanted to distribute them with training. We have completed those and while some of them (inspectors) have started to utilise their training in some areas, others are preparing to do so,” said Cole.
Aided by the testing kits, it is expected that concerted efforts will be made, mainly in remote areas, to test the quality of water available to the water consuming public.
While the inspectors are slated to be the primary personnel tasked with testing water quality from various water sources in the remote areas, it is expected that this will be done in collaboration with the Guyana Water Incorporated which was also furnished with a testing kit. It is expected that bacteriological analysis of mainly drinking water in the remote areas will be conducted on a regular basis. This process, it is believed, will address the water quality challenges that give rise to the prevalence to gastroenteritis.
With the support of the regional personnel it means that ”the Food and Drug Department is not centralised as it might be perceived to be. We actually appointed inspectors in the regions to work on our behalf,” said Cole of plans to effectively tackle water quality concerns.
This, however, does not mean that GAFDD does not have a staff limitation, Cole noted, as he alluded to a human resource augmentation plan to help boost the work of the Food and Drug Department.
The Ministry of Health was, on repeated occasions, forced to tackle gastroenteritis outbreaks which had reached worrying proportions particularly in Region One.
Health teams had travelled to the Region in early 2013 to take samples from wells and river sources, and all of the water samples were found to be unacceptable. In fact, even water samples taken from the solar powered well at Sebai was just as worrisome.
“The contamination was quite extensive…both faecal coliforms and E. Coli were present meaning there were contamination from human waste,” Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, had disclosed.
The sanitary conditions in the affected communities were also assessed and together with the Environmental Unit of the Ministry of Health and the Regional Environmental Health Office, it was deduced that the state of the disposal of garbage was aiding the problem. On several occasions health officers reported that persons were observed dumping garbage into the river as a means of waste disposal.
Dr. Persaud had therefore stressed the need for public education in the affect communities to complement other efforts to help reduce the conditions that foster gastroenteritis.