Comparison of antibiotic resistance patterns between laboratories in Accra East, Ghana

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance is increasing rapidly and developing countries are the worse affected since they provide conditions and practices that support the development and spread of resistant microbes. For better health policy on antibiotic use a national surveillance program is needed to provide baseline data from different settings. This study determines the distribution of antibiotic resistant microbes in two different laboratories and compares the results using statistical methods to ascertain if there is a variation due to human factors. Patients attending two laboratories in east Accra were recruited and samples obtained from them were cultured for microbial growth. Microbes isolated were characterized and their sensitivity to different antibiotics tested. A total of 513 samples were collected from the patients who were mostly females; 68%. The cultures that were mostly infected were urine (331), wound (116), HVS (78) and ear (26). There were few cases of throat, blood, uterus cultures but were all infected. Microbial isolates common in the different laboratories included S. aureus (96), E. coli (90), Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Proteus spp.. Microbes isolated in the different laboratories were Salmonella typhi, Shigella spp. and Streptococcus pneumonia. Microbial isolates were found resistant (over 65%) to the antibiotics ampicillin (71% and 95%), cotrimoxazole (68% and 75%) and tetracycline (70% and 80%) and moderately resistant to gentamycin (29% and 23%), erythromycin (39% and 36%) and streptomycin, and sensitive to ceftazidine and minomycin. Statistically the results from the different laboratories were found to be similar hence having the same trend. The importance of incooperating a statistical method in national surveillance program to compare results from different settings is discussed.