The Digital Education Hub is pleased to invite you to register for the third edition of the MOOC "Waterborne Infectious Diseases," led by Maël Bessaud, Chloé Dupont, Dominique Franco, and François-Xavier Weill. This MOOC explains why water can transmit bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections and explores ways to combat and prevent them.

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Water is essential to humanity, both for nutrition and hygiene. However, around 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to drinking water and nearly 4 billion do not have adequate sanitation systems. 

In addition, fresh water carries a significant risk of infection due to the presence of bacteria, viruses, or parasites. For example, contaminated water is responsible for 1.4 million deaths of young children each year due to diarrhea and repeated cholera epidemics, which have been occurring for more than 40 years in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. 

An intersectoral approach is needed to ensure sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene management. This MOOC will give you an overview of water-related infectious diseases and how to combat them.
 
By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain public health issues related to freshwater.
• Describe specific issues in various developing countries related to socio-anthropological customs.
• Define the main bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases transmitted through ingestion or contact with freshwater.
• Discuss preventive and corrective measures to reduce the risk of waterborne infectious disease transmission.

Additional information: Opening on December 2, 2025

The MOOC is led by: 

• Maël Bessaud, Director of the National Reference Center (CNR) and WHO Collaborating Center dedicated to the study of the epidemiology and macroevolution of polioviruses and non-polio enteroviruses at the Institut Pasteur;
• Chloé Dupont, microbiologist at Montpellier University Hospital, specializing in the epidemiology of emerging bacteria of environmental origin;
• Dominique Franco, professor emeritus of digestive surgery and special advisor to the education department at the Institut Pasteur;
• François-Xavier Weill, professor at the Institut Pasteur, director of the Enteric Pathogenic Bacteria Unit, the CNR for E. coli, Shigella, and Salmonella, and the CNR for Vibrios and Cholera.

Animated by Elena Lopez-Rodriguez, member of the Synthetic Biology Unit at the Institut Pasteur.

This version has been expanded to include a session on antibiotic resistance in aquatic environments (Chloé Dupont / Guilhem Conquet).

Register to the MOOC

As a Pasteurian, you can now access at any time all the content of the 24 online courses created by Institut Pasteur. You can also take advantage of the free Digital Diploma in Infectious Diseases (DNM2IP). This MOOC is one of 18 MOOC’s labeled to obtain the diploma launched in 2019 and which already has more than 2800 registrants in all continents.