Well Water Quality and Public Health Implications: the Case of Four Neighbourhoods of the City of Douala Cameroon

Well Water Quality and Public Health Implications: the Case of Four Neighbourhoods of the City of Douala Cameroon

Abstract

This paper analyses the quality of well water and population susceptibility to cholera outbreaks with respect to income levels in some neighbourhoods of the city of Douala Cameroon.

Well water quality is degraded by faecal coliforms, this enhances out breaks of diarrhoeal diseases (cholera).

Generally, the population is dominated by the poor who cannot afford pipe borne water, they resort to contaminated wells.

To verify population perceptions of poverty and susceptibility to cholera, one hundred questionnaires were administered.

To determine the presence of faecal coliforms in well water, forty well water samples were collected from the neighbourhoods.

The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the data while the water samples were subjected to microbiological analysis.

The results show that, the presence of bacterial agents like vibrio cholerea, sucrose fermenting and non sucrose fermenting organisms in well water poses great health threats in the study
area.

Keywords: Faecal coliforms, Gram staining, Poverty, Vibrio Cholerae, Water quality, Wells