Authors: Moses N Alo, Charles C Dike
The indiscriminate use of antibiotics has led to an increase in resistance to antibiotics among bacterial pathogens in developing countries. This is gradually raising great concern globally to the therapeutic management of diseases. The study was conducted to assess multidrug resistance to antibiotics among isolates from different clinical specimen collected from Federal Teaching Hospital II, Abakiliki, Ebonyi State. A total of 40 isolates comprising of 10 isolates
each of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella specie, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. The isolates obtained from FETHA were identified by standard method and the antimicrobial susceptibility of bacterial isolates was determined by the method of National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) recommended by Kirby-Bauer method. The results showed that 28 of the isolates showed multidrug resistance to the antibiotics used. It was found that all the isolates of Escherichia coli and 7 (70%) isolates of Klebsiella specie were multidrug resistant isolates. Similarly, 6 (60%) isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and 5 (50%) isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed multidrug resistance to antibiotics. Levofloxacin, Rifampcin and Streptomycin were found to be the effective drug of choice while Chloramphenicol, Ampicillin, Ceporex and Nalixidic acid were found to be the antibiotic to be highly resistant. The study shows that a good percentage of people were infested by multidrug resistance bacterial agents. The findings of the study suggested that stringent guidelines should be established for antibiotic policy within hospitals, encouraging prudent use of antimicrobials.