Abstract:
Introduction: Intestinal infections caused by soil transmitted helminth and diarhoegenic
Escherichia coli (E. coli) are a major threat to the health and socio-economic wellbeing of
children in developing countries. Soil-transmitted helminthes (STH), Ascaris lumbricoides
(A. lumbricoides), Trichuris tricuria (T. trichuris ), Hookworms and diarhogenic E coli
are transmitted through the faecal-oral route and enter the body through the ingestion of
eggs (STH) or E. coli pathogens following contact with contaminated hands, food, soil or
the deliberate act of eating contaminated soil.
Aim: This study aim to determine the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infection and
diarhoegenic E. coli on the hands of school children in the Vhembe district of South Africa.
Methods: The study was conducted among school children aged 5 to15 years, attending
grades 0(R) to 8 at the primary and secondary school levels in the Vhembe district region
of the Limpopo province. A total of 358 hand washing samples was collected from the
hands of school children using hand anionic (7X 1% quadrafos, glycol ether and dioctyl
sulfoccinate sodium salt) soap solution. The Microscopic McMaster slide technique was
used for the identification of intestinal parasitic eggs and the Colilert Quanti-Tray®/2000
technique was used for the enumeration of E. coli. A standardised Multiplex PCR protocol
was utilized to characterize the positive pathogenic E. coli strains obtained from the
Colilert Quanti-Tray®/2000. A structural questionnaire was used to associate the positive
results with selected socio-demographic variables. The raw data was organized and
analysed by the use of SPSS version 24 software.
Results: A prevalence of 2.6% intestinal parasite was found among the study population
with hookworm and Enterobius vermicularis having detection rate of 0.6% and 2.0%
respectively. However there were no Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura detected
in the study population. A prevalence of 13.4% of the samples was positive for E. coli and
4.7% were identified as pathogenic E. coli strains: Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli
(EAEC), Atypical Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC), Typical Enteropathogenic
Escherichia Coli (TPEC) and Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) distributed with
prevalence percentage of 2%, 0.3%, 1.1% and 0.3% respectively. The study also revealed
a significant association between hand child hygiene with the prevalence of E. coli.
Conclusion: Environmental sanitation conditions like type of toilets and lack of safe
drinking water is closely associated with the prevalence of E. coli among the school going
children.
