Access to good quality drinking water is a challenge in most towns and cities in
Ghana and households have for years depended on other sources of water to
supplement their activities. The introduction of sachet water to consumers was to
provide safe, hygienic and affordable instant drinking water to the public. Although
this is a laudable idea, current trends seem to suggest that sachet drinking water could
be a route of transmission of diseases. The objective of this study was to determine
the bacteriological quality of sachet water popularly known as "pure water" produced
and sold in the Teshie-Nungua suburbs of Accra, Ghana, one of the areas with
perennial water shortage forcing inhabitants to depend on sachet water as a source of
drinking water. Using simple random sampling procedures, 30 samples from 10
brands of sachet water were collected from hawkers/vendors in Teshie-Nungua (3
samples per brand). One sachet water sample was taken from each site every fortnight
for six weeks in May-June 2007. The samples were analyzed using multiple tube
method and biochemical assays. Results were recorded as Most Probable Number
(MPN) of coliform per 100ml of water. The bacteriological quality of the samples was
assessed based on the World Health Organization (WHO) classification system for
drinking water. Five (16.7 %) of the samples were
Excellent, 5 (16.7%) were
Satisfactory, 9 (30%) were
Suspicious and 11 (36.7%) were
Unsatisfactory using the
MPN values recorded. Six samples were contaminated with faecal coliform and two
of these, (P1 and P2) were from the same brand.
Escherichia coli
was also detected in
the two samples (P1 and P2) out of three samples from the same brand. The level of
contamination could be due to inadequate treatment of water samples by the
producers, improper use of filters or post-production contamination. The findings
suggest the need to enforce the laws that govern the operation of such production
outfits as well as educating consumers on the need to purchase sachet water from
manufacturers that have been licensed to produce water and whose product bears the
stamp of the Food and Drugs Board of Ghana.
