World’s Largest Mass Bathing Event Influences the Bacterial Communities of Godavari, a Holy River of India

Abstract

Kumbh Mela is one of the largest religious mass gathering events (MGE) involving bathing in rivers. The exponential rise in the number of devotees, from around 0.4 million in 1903 to 120 million in 2013, bathing in small specified sites can have a dramatic impact on the river ecosystem. Here, we present the spatiotemporal profiling of bacterial communities in Godavari River, Nashik, India, comprising five sites during the Kumbh Mela, held in 2015. Assessment of environmental parameters indicated deterioration of water quality. Targeted amplicon sequencing demonstrates approximately 37.5% loss in microbial diversity because of anthropogenic activity during MGE. A significant decrease in phyla viz. Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes was observed, while we noted substantial increase in prevalence of the phylum Firmicutes (94.6%) during MGE. qPCR estimations suggested nearly 130-fold increase in bacterial load during the event. Bayesian mixing model accounted the source of enormous incorporation of bacterial load of human origin. Further, metagenomic imputations depicted increase in virulence and antibiotic resistance genes during the MGE. These observations suggest the striking impact of the mass bathing on river ecosystem. The subsequent increase in infectious diseases and drug-resistant microbes pose a critical public health concern.

SEDE-GPS: socio-economic data enrichment based on GPS information

“…We acknowledge that this notion, succinctly formulated as “everything is everywhere, but the environment selects”, is highly debated [21–24]. Furthermore, we do not take into account that the composition of microbial communities can be majorly influenced by recent events or the microenvironment of the sampling position [25, 26]. These assumptions are neccesary because the dataset analyzed here does not contain multiple samples that were collected on different time points for each of the lakes.…”

Mass gatherings medicine: public health issues arising from mass gathering religious and sporting events

“…26 The rivers of India are known to be polluted owing to inadequately treated household and industrial effluents. 26,27,29 A 20 times increase in blaNDM-1 gene carrying bacteria during the pilgrimage on the bank of the Ganges was observed during the 2015 Kumbh Mela. 27 A novel antibioticresistant bacterial species, Corynebacterium godavarianum, has been isolated from the bathing site of the Godavari River.…”

“…The Kumbh Mela, the Hindu religious pilgrimage festival, is the largest mass gathering event in the world, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] it attracts more than 120 million pilgrims from across the world for up to 2 months, and is held every 3 years alternately along the banks of four holy rivers: the Ganga, or Ganges, River (Haridwar district), Godavari River (Nasik district), Kshipra River (Ujjain district), and Sangam River (Prayag district, Allahabad) at a confluence of Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati. The 2013 Kumbh Mela event was attended by 70 million Hindu pilgrims over 55 days at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers.…”

“…17,18 Contamination of river water with faeces, urine, saliva, and sputa is inevitable and leads to transmission of waterborne and respiratory tract infections. 12,14,20,21 A notable example of such a cycle of transmission is the 1817-24 Asia cholera pandemic, which was associated with the Kumbh Mela. 23 21 Bacterial load in the river increased by approximately 130 fold.…”

“…23 21 Bacterial load in the river increased by approximately 130 fold. 12,[24][25][26][27][28][29] At the 2013 Kumbh Mela, a study 15,16,20 that followed 30 000 pilgrims in four sector hospitals found a 5% incidence of diarrhoeal diseases over a 23day period. A rise in nonbloody diarrhoea cases was seen just 2 days after the main bathing day on Jan 29, 2013, and a peak in upper respiratory tract infections coincided with the peak in nonbloody diarrhoeal disease.…”