Abstract

A swab of mobile phone and hands of health care workers (HCWs) were examined to determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus (SA), different antibiotic resistant pattern were determined in a cross-sectional study design. The objective of this study was to isolate S. aureus from samples of mobile phone and hands of HCWs from Hawassa Referral Hospital and to determine their antibiotic resistant patterns. A cross-sectional study design was carried on 152 mobile phones and hands of HCWs from different rooms of Hawassa Referral Hospital and screened for the presence of S. aureus. Gram staining, oxidase, catalase, DNase, haemolysis and coagulase tests were employed for bacterial identification. 97.4% of the samples were contaminated with different microorganisms. However, the contamination level of S. aureus in mobile phone and hands of HCW’s were 53.9 and 55.5%, respectively. A total of 82 S. aureus isolates from mobile phone and 84 S. aureus were obtained from hands of HCWs during this study. The levels of contamination with S. aureus were slightly higher in hands of HCWs. About 65.9 and 47.6% strains were resistant to Ampicillin (AP) (10 μg) and Penicillin G (PG) (10 μg), respectively. About 26.8, 31.7, 15.9, 40.2, 26.6, 22.0, 14.6, 40.2 and 31.7% strains were resistant to Amoxicillin (Ax) (30 μg), Ciprofloxacin (CIP) (5 μg), Ceftriaxone (CRO) (30 μg), Oxacillin (Ox) (1 μg), Chloramphenicol (CAF) (10 μg), Doxycycline (DOX) (30 μg), Gentamycin (10 μg), Vancomycin (V) (30 μg) and Tetracycline TTC (30 μg), respectively. The resistant level of S. aureus to CIP, CRO, CAF, DOX and Ax were low as compared to AP, PG, V and Ox. S. aureus is normally resident in different habitat; therefore, the S. aureus present in the mobile phone and hands of HCW’s may have resulted from contamination of hands of HCWs, showing the need to improve personal hygiene conditions in the hospital, specially OR and ICU. The training of healthcare workers on strict infection control procedure, hand hygiene, mobile phone cleaning habit and environmental disinfection are standards to control pathogen transmission.

Key words: Antibiotics, S. aureus, mobile phone, cell phone, health care workers (HCWs).