Antimicrobial resistance pattern of bacterial isolates from different clinical specimens in Southern Ethiopia: A three year retrospective study

Emergence of antimicrobial resistance is a major public health problem worldwide, particularly in developing countries. The effectiveness of currently available antibiotics is decreasing as a result of increasing resistant strains among clinical isolates. The aim of this study was to determine the antimicrobial resistance pattern of bacterial isolate from different clinical specimens at Hawassa University Referral Hospital. A retrospective data (from January 2012 to December 2014) of patients registered at microbiology record book were reviewed. Age, sex, type of clinical specimen, type of bacterial isolate and antimicrobial resistance pattern were extracted using data extraction format. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16 software. A total of 143 bacterial isolates were collected from clinical specimens such as: urine (63; 44%), ear discharge (26; 18.2%), pus (25; 17.5%), stool (12; 8.4%), nasal swab (12; 8.4%), genital swab (3; 2.1%) and cerebrospinal fluid (2; 1.4%). The predominant bacterial isolates were E. coli (35; 24.5%) followed by S. aureus (31; 21.7%) and Klebsiella species (21; 14.7%). Greater than half percent of resistance were observed for ampicilin, cotrimoxazole, penicillin G, chloramphenicol, gentamicin, norfloxacin and oxacilin. Moreover, MDR was observed in 127 (88.8%) of the isolates. High prevalence of multi-drug resistant bacteria was observed in this study. Therefore, resistance surveillance studies should be conducted to develop local antibiogram data, for choosing the best antimicrobial therapy.