Urbanization and Waterborne Pathogen Emergence in Low-Income Countries: Where and How to Conduct Surveys?

Alexandra Bastaraud, Philippe Cecchi, Pascal Handschumacher, Mathias Altmann and Ronan Jambou
Additional contact information
Alexandra Bastaraud: Laboratoire d’Hygiène des Aliments et de l’Environnement, Institut Pasteur de Madagascar, BP 1274, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
Philippe Cecchi: MARBEC (IRD, IFREMER, UM2 and CNRS), University Montpellier, 34095 Montpellier, France
Pascal Handschumacher: IRD UMR 912 SESSTIM, INSERM-IRD-Université de Marseille II, 13000 Marseille, France
Mathias Altmann: ISPED Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux II, 146 rue Leo Saignat, 33076 Bordeaux cedex, France
Ronan Jambou: Département de Parasitologie et des insectes vecteurs, Institut Pasteur Paris, 75015 Paris, France

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: A major forthcoming sanitary issue concerns the apparition and spreading of drug-resistant microorganisms, potentially threatening millions of humans. In low-income countries, polluted urban runoff and open sewage channels are major sources of microbes. These microbes join natural microbial communities in aquatic ecosystems already impacted by various chemicals, including antibiotics. These composite microbial communities must adapt to survive in such hostile conditions, sometimes promoting the selection of antibiotic-resistant microbial strains by gene transfer. The low probability of exchanges between planktonic microorganisms within the water column may be significantly improved if their contact was facilitated by particular meeting places. This could be specifically the case within biofilms that develop on the surface of the myriads of floating macroplastics increasingly polluting urban tropical surface waters. Moreover, as uncultivable bacterial strains could be involved, analyses of the microbial communities in their whole have to be performed. This means that new-omic technologies must be routinely implemented in low- and middle-income countries to detect the appearance of resistance genes in microbial ecosystems, especially when considering the new ‘plastic context.’ We summarize the related current knowledge in this short review paper to anticipate new strategies for monitoring and surveying microbial communities.

Keywords: waterborne diseases; drug resistance; urbanization; surface water; plastics; metagenomic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/2/480/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/2/480/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:2:p:480-:d:307768

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().