Back ground: The quality of drinking-water is a powerful environmental determinant of health. Safe drinking water is one of the basic necessities for human beings. However, billions of people in the world have not access to it today. Of this, significant number of the population is from the developing countries. Water becomes contaminated with faecal material due to inadequate protection of the source, unhygienic practices of the community at the source and poor household handling practices. The objective of this study was to assess water handling practice and level of bacteriological contamination from source to point of use among protected water beneficiary households of Boloso Sore Woreda, Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in January 2019. Data were collected using interviewing of households and bacteriological analysis of water. A total of 545 households for water handling practices were included in the study. Bacteriological test of water sources from five shallow wells, five protected hand dug wells and eight protected on spot springs were measured. Randomly selected sub-sample of 75 households of water storage was tested for fecal coliforms. Fecal coliforms (FC) enumeration was carried out using membrane filtration techniques in which 100ml of water sample filtered through the membrane filter (Millipore 45μm). Water bacteriological analysis was done using Oxfam deluge test kit in the laboratory. All quality assurance of laboratory analysis was maintained appropriately. Data management was made by using Epi-info version 3.5.3 for data entry cleaning and SPSS version 21.0 for data analysis.

Results: Among participants, 207 (38%) of households practiced unsafe water handling practices. In general, 44% of water sources and 91% household water storages were positive for fecal coliform. Sixty percent of shallow wells, 60% of protected hand dug wells and 25% of protected on-spot springs were found positive for fecal coliform. Among 18 water sources tested for bacteriological test, 10 (56%) of the water sources had <1 CFU/100ml and the rest 8 (44%) of the source had above 1 CFU/100ml. Among the fecally contaminated households water storage, 6 households, 21 households, 38 households E. coli concentration ranging from >100, 11-50 and 1-10 respectively.

Conclusion: Appropriate protection and management of water sources in addition to regular testing, treatment and monitoring was found to be necessary for the provision of safe water. In addition to this the safe water handling practice at households should be promoted in the community.