A total of 938 faecal samples of diarrheal stool of pediatric patients attending Madonna University Teaching Hospital (MUTH) from June 2003 to June 2004 were examined. 218 of eight different bacterial strains namely
Escherichia coli
90(41.3%),
Shigella dysenteriae
38(17.4%),
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
20(9.2%),
Salmonella typhi
18(8.3%),
Staphylococcus aureus
7(3.2%),
Proteus mirabilis
5(2.3%),
Enterococcus faecalis
25(11.5%) and
Klebsiella pneumoniae
15(6.9%) were isolated. The susceptibility pattern of the isolates to the various antibiotics varied with
Proteus mirabilis and
Klebsiella pneumoniae
100% sensitive to peflacine and
Enterococcus faecalis 100% sensitive to ciprofloxacin and augmentin.Most of the isolates were least sensitive tocotrimoxazole, ampicillin, erythromycin gentamicin, streptomycin and chloramphenicol. The resistance plasmids to the various isolates were very diverse and distributive among the isolates. They were also highly transferable with a high frequency range of 2x10
-2 to 6x10
-4. Some of the isolates had plasmids bands that ranged from ≤0.55kbp to ≥1.14kbp. This indicates that plasmids allow the movement of genetic materials, including antimicrobial resistance genes between bacterial species and strains.
