The Emergence of Multidrug Resistance Bacteria at Kong Kong River, Johor, Malaysia: Preliminary Study

Kampung Kong Kong Laut is a fishing village located in Kong Kong, Masai, Johor, Malaysia that is one of the main seafood producers in the area. The status quo on the emergence of the multidrug resistance bacteria in Johor is unknown. Thus, this study aims at investigating the emergence of multidrug resistance bacteria in the water sample form the selected site. Besides that, the resistance of the isolated bacteria toward antibiotics were studied against selected antibiotics, such as ampicilin, bacitracin, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, kanamycin, nalidixic acid and streptomycin. A total of 18 different strains were succesfully isolated and based on the morphological and conventional biochemical tests, the isolates were identified as Escherichia sp., Bacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Staphylococcus sp., Proteus sp., Helicobacter sp. and Serratia sp. From this study, it was found that all the 61% of the bacteria (11 strains) were resistant toward all the antibiotic tested. The rest of the strains (38% or seven strains) showed resistance toward at least one antibiotic. All the seven strains showed different range of sensitivity toward bacitracin, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, kanamycin and streptomycin.