Title: Antibiogram of bacterial isolated from well water as sources of drinking water in Margibi County, Liberia

Biography:

Glory I Baysah has completed the PhD degree at the age of 39 years from Babcock University. She is presently the Vice President for Academics. She has also served on many administrative positions and published more than 6 papers, and presently working on different articles

Abstract

Water is obtained from harvesting of rain, bodies of water (rivers, ponds) or from ground water (wells, springs and boreholes). Although water can contain unwanted chemicals (from natural sources and agricultural activities), the greatest risk to human health is from faecal contamination of water supplies causing water- borne diseases. Microbial load of borehole water samples from seven areas within Kakata Margibi County Liberia was determined using standard microbiological methods. Susceptibility of the bacteria isolated to commercial antibiotics was also assessed. Results showed that total aerobic plate count ranged from 1.9x10 to 5.4x10² cfu/ml, while total coliform count ranged from 0.6x10 to 1.8x10 cfu/100ml. Faecal coliform count was generally low in most samples and completely absent from sample from one of the study areas. Microbial counts differed significantly (p=0.05) among the various locations studied. Predominant bacteria isolated included Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus species, Salmonella species, Citrobacter species, Escherichia coli and bacillus species. The antibiogram carried out using the disc diffusion technique showed that Staphylococcus aureus was most sensitive to streptomycin and least to ciprofloxacin, Enterococcus species was most sensitive to septrin but resistant to many of the antibioties tested.  Escherichia coli were most sensitive to septrin and least to ciprofloxacin. On the contrary, Ciprofloxacin was highly inhibitory to Citrobacter species in the same was as nalidixic acid. Salmonella species were highly sensitive to nalidixic acid and augmentin, while the Bacillus species was resistant to all the antibiotics tested which is of public health concern.