Background: Household drinking water of acceptable quality is supposed to be free from pathogenic microorganism and the presence of E. coli indicates recent fecal contamination. Household’s water treatment and safe storage also known as point of use water treatment (POU) has been shown to be an effective means of ensuring safe drinking water for households and hence reducing diarrhoea and other diseases associated with unsafe drinking water.
Main objective: The study was undertaken to determine household drinking water quality and hygienic practices related to its use in the squatter settlements of Mwanza city.
Methodology: This cross sectional was conducted in the squatter settlements of the Mwanza city, North-Western region of Tanzania whereby 207 households were obtained using a simple random sampling technique. Semi-structured questionnaires and observation methods were used to collect information. Moreover, drinking water samples were collected from each household for bacteriological analysis mainly total coliforms and E. coli. Drinking water quality guidelines were used to categorize whether drinking water was of acceptable standard or not. The data were entered, cleaned and analyzed using STATA version 11.0. The study was approved by Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences-Bugando Research and Publications Committee.
Results: A total of 207 households was studies. The mean age of the study population was 31 years±3 standard deviation with a male to female ratio of 1:28. The proportion of households that reported treating water with any method was 75.84% (157) and 96.62% (200) used the clay pot (Mtungi) with no tap/spigot storage. Out of 207 drinking water samples tested, about 27.54% (57) had fecal contamination of E. coli. Also, 52.66% (109) of all drinking water samples tested had total coliforms. Furthermore, this study found that 23.19% (48) of samples of stored water (for other purpose) were contaminated with total Coliforms and 3.86% (8) found with E. coli. All water sources (tap) samples were not found contaminated with either total coliform or E. coli.
Conclusion: This study found a significant level of deterioration of water quality the source to the drinking cup; at the source water was found to be safe without either total or fecal coliform, while at household level 52.66% and 27.54% of drinking water samples were found to be contaminated with total and fecal respectively. Nevertheless, the increase in contamination of domestic water after collection indicates that until an uninterrupted, safe water supply is possible, the great point at which the major health impact can be achieved is at the household level.
= Keywords: Bacteriological water contamination, total and fecal coliforms, drinking water, hygienic practices, household water treatment methods and storage and squatter settlement.