National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS)
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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Hospital acquired infections are a problem in both developed and developing countries. India is ranked second in the list of number of mobile phone users in the world. Healthcare workers do use mobile phones. However they are seldom cleaned, therefore serve as potential reservoir of nosocomial pathogens: To determine the bacterial flora on mobile phones of HCWs and non HCWs; To determine the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of microorganisms isolated from mobile phones of HCWs and non HCWs; To study the efficacy of decontamination with a single 70% isopropyl alcohol swipe. A total of 150 HCWs and 50 Non HCWs were involved in the study. The samples were collected aseptically from mobile phones before and after disinfection with 70% isopropyl alcohol using sterile cotton swab moistened with sterile normal saline. Pre- and post- disinfection swabs were inoculated onto blood agar and MacConkey agar plate, incubated aerobically at 370C for 24 hours. Identification was done as per recommended standard microbiological methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed as per CLSI guidelines. Among 150 mobile phones of HCWs, 141 yielded single or mixed growth with a total of 306 isolates. CONS (113) were prominent isolates followed by gram positive bacilli (96), MSSA (28), MRSA (24), Pseudomonas (14), Micrococcus (14), Enterococcus (10) and E. coli (7). Out of 50 Non HCWs, 15(30%) showed growth, of which 11 were CONS & 7 were Gram positive bacilli. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed multi drug resistant organisms in mobile phones of HCWs. The efficacy of decontamination was found to be 89% as only 15 mobile phones of HCWs showed growth after decontamination. We conclude that mobile phones of HCWs can act as a potential source of nosocomial infections and simple usage of alcohol disinfectant and hand washing practices can reduce the risk of infection.
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