Aerobic bacterial isolates from mobiles of health care workers in a tertiary care hospital of North Kerala, India

2016-10-22T01-09-52Z
Source: International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health
Jamaluddeen C. V., Syed Mustaq Ahmed, Shakir V. P. A.
Background: Mobile phones have gained so much importance in day today life that we dont want to stay apart from them at any time, so is the condition with the health care workers who tend to carry them and attend to calls while doing procedures and in other patient care activities many studies have shown that mobile phones can carry dangerous pathogens on them which can be a risk to the patients in order to highlight this fact we carried out this study in our hospital setup. Methods: A six months study was undertaken in our institute after obtaining permission from the institutional ethical committee. Mobile phones were swabbed over the screen, keypad, sides and external cover with sterile cotton swabs moistened with normal saline. And immediately inoculated on the culture media and processed as per the standard protocol. Results: out of the 100 mobiles phones that were screened for aerobic bacterial colonization 88 (88%) showed bacterial isolates. Among the 93 isolates from the mobile phones the highest number of isolate were from pseudomonas species 42 (45.16%) followed by coagulase negative Staphylococcus (CONS) 19 (63.3%) , profession wise mobile phones of technicians showed the highest isolates 41 (44.08%) followed by Doctors 30 isolates (32.25%). Conclusions: Our study showed that mobile phones can act as vehicles of transmission for bacterial pathogens as also proved by various studies so it is important to maintain the mobile phones in a hygienic way so they dont play a role in transmission of pathogens as these instruments cannot be totally avoided and their importance in health care is immense.


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