Bacteriological and Physicochemical Quality Assessment of a Segment of Asa River Water, Ilorin, Nigeria

The existence of all living organisms depends on water resource which is continually polluted, and is therefore of public health importance. This study investigated river water samples for physicochemical and bacteriological quality of post-office segment of Asa river in Ilorin using standard procedures and the isolates were also identified with standard methods. Eight selected antibiotics used were in this study to determine the trend of susceptibility of the microorganisms to some of the antibiotics. The values recorded for physicochemical parameters of the water samples were within the limits of WHO standard for safe drinking water. The temperature of the water samples ranged between 21.0 and 28.40C while water pH ranged from 7.1 to 7.5. The total heterotrophic count values ranged between 1.2×104 and 7.8×104 cfu/ml, total coliform count values ranged between 4.0×102 and 1.0×104 cfu/100ml, total fecal count values were between 0 and 5.9×103 cfu/100ml some of which were found to be higher than the WHO stipulated values prescribed for river water. Large amount of the bacteria isolated from this water indicated that the water source is a reservoir for many waterborne pathogens; this includes Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Salmonella sp., Shigella sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella sp., Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus sp. Approximately 75% of the isolates were sensitive to ofloxacin and 50% of the isolates were sensitive to gentamicin, while the entire organisms were resistant to augmentin, cefuroxime, ceftazidime, ceftriaxone. It was inferred that, the selected of segment of the river analyzed revealed high levels of pollution with antibiotic resistant organisms hence not suitable for human consumption without implementing appropriate purification and treatment regimen.