Abstract:
Vegetables that are handled under unhygienic conditions when consumed raw transmit various kinds of infectious diseases. The objective of this study was to assess the extent of bacteriological and parasitological contamination of selected vegetables sold at local markets of Harar town, Eastern Ethiopia. Thus, a laboratory based cross sectional survey study was conducted on vegetables collected from markets in Harar town from December 2019 to February 2020. A structured questionnaire was prepared to collect data on factors associated with parasitic contamination of vegetables in the study area. To this end, 120 samples were collected from four leafy vegetables, namely; lettuce (Lactuca sativa), spinach (Spinacea oleracea), kale (Brassica carinata)) and cabbage (Brassica oleracea) from three major local markets (Shewaber, Arategna and Deker) in Harar town and analyzed for their bacteriological and parasitological contaminants following standard procedures. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS Version 20. The results revealed that the overall mean values for total aerobic mesophilic bacterial count, total coliform count, and fecal coliform count, in all vegetables from the three markets were 6.7x107 CFU/g, 5.0x106 CFU/g and 6.4x105 CFU/g, respectively. These leafy vegetables were also examined for some infective parasitic stages. Among 120 vegetable samples examined, 26(43.3%) were contaminated with at least one parasite species. Ascaris lumbricoides egg was the dominant (33.3%) intestinal parasitic stage detected in the present study followed by Entamoeba histolytica cyst (24.2%), Giardia lamblia cyst (16.7%) and Cryptosporidium oocyst (8.3%). Washing vegetables before display, type of vegetables, source of vegetables and means of display were some of the risk factors, which were significantly associated (P< 0.05) with the prevalence of parasites on the selected vegetables.
