Soil Leads to Fecal Oral Transmission in Children

Every year 500,000 children die from diarrheal diseases each year. Diarrheal diseases are causes by both viral and bacterial agents but are almost all transmitted by fecal oral transmission.  There are a variety of ways  that children get fecal matter into their mouths. Is this through food, water or soil.  There was not very much research on this before a study that came out from Laura Kwong, PhD student from Stanford University. 
   They collected 10,000 samples over the rainy and dry season for fecal contaminants and e.coli (indication that the sample was contaminated). In Bangladesh where the study was done 100% of the soil and ponds were contaminated with fecal matter.  In order to understand the relative contribution they watched children with video and structural observations.   They watched what children touched and then what they put into their mouths.  The children put less things in their mouths over time but they put their fingers in their mouths more as they grew up.  They also saw that 33% of children directly ingested soil, but no children ate fecal matter directly. 
    In order to figure out the role of ingestion they preformed a Monte-Carlo distribution to figure out a differential contribution of exposure. For children the biggest driver for the younger was the fingers in the mouth but for older children it was eating with their fingers.
     In order to decrease the risk of Carona, arena and enterovirus prevalence, it is imperative that we reduce the risk of children putting fecal covered fingers into their mouths.

- Chris

I wrote this while attending this talk: https://globalhealth.stanford.edu/research/ResearchConvening2018/abstracts.html#1oral