Social Habits of Health Professionals and their Mobile Phones as Source of MDR Nosocomial Bacteria in Cameroon, Sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

Health professional mobile phone can be the vehicle bacteria transmission from one caregiver to another. Despite the ubiquity \n of mobile phones among health professionals as tool for mobile phone-based Health, there is limited literature on general \n social habits related to manipulation of this technological tool by health practitioner and the risk of bacterial contamination \n within hospital in Cameroon. Cross-sectional study on personal mobile phone of health care professionals was carried out \n from three major hospitals in Yaounde Cameroon. A self-administration questionnaire was given to obtain demographic data \n on some mobile phone related social habits and potential exposed individuals to the isolated micro flora. Sterile swab was \n used to collect sample from each personal mobile phone of the enrolled health professionals. For each sample, culture and \n antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed in bacteriological Laboratory of the Medical Research Center. Of the 163 \n mobile phone swabs, 156 (95.7%) have grown while 7 (4.3%) had sterile culture. For these 156 positive cultures 55.8% of them \n displayed bacteria count greater than 10 colony forming units. Amount of bacteria isolated Coagulase negative Staphylococcus \n were most prevalent (75.9%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (16.1%). However low prevalence was registered for Gram \n negative bacteria: Enterobacter cloacae (4.6%), Acinetobacter spp (2.3%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (1.1%). Prevalence \n of multidrug resistance of pathogens recorded in our study was 71.4% for Staphylococcus aureus and for Gram negative \n bacteria the MDR represented 100%, 75% and 50% of Pseudomonas aeroginosa, Entrobacter cloacae and Acinetobacter \n spp respectively. Using phone at the hours of work, moving around patients with phone, lacking of hand hygiene of health \n professional were identified as high risk of dissemination of MDR in our society. Health professional’s social habits with their \nmobile phones might be risk factors of no social bacterial infection and the MDR distribution.