Research Paper - Archives of General Internal Medicine (2018) Volume 2, Issue 3

Role of Common Environmental Surfaces in the School in Transmission Enteric Bacterial Pathogens.

Inanimate surfaces play a role in the transmission of human pathogens, e.g. (fecal coliform) either direct or indirect. Toilets surfaces are a potential source of finding many bacterial due to different factors that help pathogens to grow and transmission. The related of transmission of enteric pathogenic microorganisms via the hands of the toilet visitors thus continues to be a problem in the community.

Aim: To assess the role of environmental surfaces at schools, to transmission enteric bacterial pathogens.

Methods: The exposure area microbiological cotton swabs were collected from 16 selected schools in Dammam town from government schools and rented schools, twice per week and transferred to the microbiology laboratory at the University of Dammam to process within 2 hours for fecal coliforms.

Results: Among 592 (100%) microbiology swab samples of the selected command from selected commonly touched environmental surfaces only 15 (2.5%) showed positive for fecal coliforms with the highest isolation frequency from toilet washer 11 (14.9%) of the 15 total positive samples followed by sink wall 3 (4%) and finally the class door handle 1 (1.4%) of the 15 total positive samples.

Conclusions: The highest positive results were in governmental school’s surface; lowest positive results were in rented schools surface. However, Hand-washing, a simple and effective way to cut down on cross-contamination is all too often forgotten.

Author(s): Abdulrahim M Alkhamis, Mohamed Noweir

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