Taza City is among the Moroccan cities which is in full urban expansion, with a daily wastewater discharge volume estimated at 16534 m3/d in 2020, and expected to reach 20056 m3/d by 2030. These waters, collected in a combined sewerage network, are directly released into the natural environment without any treatment. Indeed, a large part of this water is discharged into Oued Defali, the main tributary of Oued Larbâa. In order to manage and better understand these discharges impact on the streams crossing this city, wastewater sampling campaigns were carried out for one year from May 2018 to April 2019 at domestic (S1) and industrial (S2) sites. The wastewater physicochemical characterization revealed that these discharges are highly loaded with organic matter in terms of chemical oxygen demand (S1 avg = 1231.44 mg/l and S2 avg = 933.03 mg/l), biochemical oxygen demand (S1 avg = 511.87 mg/l and S2 avg = 464.35 mg/l), and suspended matter (S1 avg = 744.11 mg/l and S2 avg = 578.13 mg/l). The use of principal component analysis (PCA) has allowed us to collect as much information as possible from the database of the physicochemical analyses performed for the studied parameters.

Water is mandatory for the functioning of hospitals. Its consumption varies from one service to another, and its use can reduce the service quality on one hand and presents a major risk of nosocomial infection on the other hand. The health risks related to the use of water in hospitals are mostly microbiological, but sometimes they can be chemical. For this reason, the conducted work aimed to evaluate, for the first time, the quality and bacteriological efficiency of the network water of the provincial hospital center IBN BAJA in Taza, Northeast Morocco. During one year, 72 samples were analyzed in six surgery departments, one sample per month for each ward at a rate of six samples per month and per department. The results obtained showed that the water quality of the hospital network was in conformity with the requirements of the Moroccan standards. Nonetheless, some bacterial strains such as Aeromonas salmonicida spp salmonicida, Enterococcus spp., Pseudomonas luteola, Sphingomonas paucimobilis, Pseudomonas stutzeri, Stenotrophonomas maltophilia, Burkholderia cepacia and Micrococcus luteus, which constitute a major risk to human health, were found. Moreover, after sensitivity evaluation to the twenty-seven antibiotics, some strains have been shown to be multi-resistant, which can present a major risk of nosocomial infections in the studied hospital for human beings.

Morocco has an important groundwater reserve, especially in the Atlas domain, corresponding to its largest water reservoir. This reserve comes from rainwater infiltrated into rocks and sediments to give rise to mineralized waters feeding many springs and having curative properties, which confer each spa-specific therapeutic indications, based on the medicinal properties of its waters. All over the world, mineral waters of thermal springs have interesting therapeutic uses to cure some diseases; unfortunately, such potential is underexploited in Morocco. This narrative review deals with the distribution of thermal springs in Morocco, the classification of their thermal waters, and their health effects, with the aim to enhance them. For this purpose, previous studies’ results on different aspects of thermal waters were searched in the most famous scientific databases, by using targeted specific keywords. Literature has shown that Morocco contains several thermal springs, scattered throughout the Middle Atlas, in the South, and in the Rif, which are regarded as waters of high therapeutic quality, whose thermal cures are often recommended to people suffering from rheumatism and locomotor system’s diseases, skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis, cardiovascular diseases, overweight, or respiratory troubles. However, apart from the unique and real thermal station of Moulay Yacoub, the other thermal springs are exploited in an empirical and artisanal way, mainly by a local population. So, as hydrotherapy constitutes a good choice of natural therapy using water components as a complement or alternative to conventional treatments, a better understanding of the thermal springs’ distribution in Morocco, their thermal waters’ classification, and their potential health effects may enable their valorization through a better use of their waters.

Background. Surgical site infection is a major public health problem in the world. Nasal carriage is a major risk factor for the development of nosocomial Staphylococcus aureus infection, especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Our work aims to determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and the associated risk factors and to evaluate their sensitivity to 27 antibiotics. Methods. A cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 patients, hospitalized in preoperative care of surgery units at the Taza Provincial Hospital Center in the Fez-Meknes region, from January to June 2019. Samples were taken from the patient’s anterior nostril using single-use sterile dry or wet cotton swabs and then analyzed in the Provincial Public Health Laboratory in Taza. The carriage of Staphylococcus aureus was studied by conventional bacteriological methods by spreading nasal swabs on Chapman culture medium, while antibiotic resistance was determined by the Mueller–Hinton agar disc diffusion method according to the recommendations described by the Antibiogram Committee of the French Society of Microbiology 2019 (CA SFM 2019). Results. Of the 84 patients found to be positive, 45.24% had coagulase-positive Staphylococcus aureus and 54.76% had coagulase-negative Staphylococcus. After surgery in the postoperative phase, 16 patients developed surgical site infections, of which two had a negative nasal culture and 14 had positive nasal culture. Among the Staphylococcus aureus-positive patients, 36.84% were colonized by a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and 63.16% by a methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA). Of these, 57.14% of MRSA colonized patients developed an infection of the surgical site and 42.85% showed no sign of SSI, while for patients colonized by MSSA, 16.67% developed SSI and 83.33% showed no sign of SSI. Moreover, children were the most affected by MRSA. Concerning antibiotic sensitivity, multiresistance of MRSA to more than 3 antibiotics has been found. Conclusion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study carried out in this hospital center with the aim of knowing the prevalence of nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA and to identify the risk factors in order to prevent infections related to nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA.