Medscape: Canada’s First Nations Communities Call for Clean Water

“When it comes to infectious disease, water plays a huge role, whether you look at cholera in London in the 1850s or the prevalence of infectious diseases in different communities today,” said Dr. Ayush Kumar, a professor of microbiology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Kumar and colleagues have studied the microbiological content of water among First Nations communities in Manitoba, particularly the bacterial diversity and resistome of drinking water stored in cisterns. They found that the cistern water had a high number of bacteria and diverse antimicrobial resistance genes, which can lead to major health risks and the spread of drug-resistant infections.

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