Assessment of bacterial status of washroom door handles and handrails of stairs at the College of Health Sciences, Makerere University

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study is to assess status and the level of bacterial contamination of washroom door handles and knobs of toilets and bathrooms at college of health sciences (CHS). Background: Bacteria are ubiquitous and constitute part of every ecosystem in the environment where they live either freely or as parasite. Fomite can be described as a non-living object capable of carrying infectious organism and it is considered as one of the major source of spread of community acquired infection. In this study, door handles/knobs were swabbed with sterile swab stick moistened with sterile water. The content was transferred to agar Petri dishes and then incubated for 24 hours at 35˚C – 37C Methods: This was a quantitative. Samples were collected from toilets/washroom door handles and hand rails at the college of health sciences using cotton swabs. The samples were processed and examined for the level of bacterial contamination and presence of gram negative bacteria. Samples were tracked with accompanying requisition forms indicating the points of collections, time of collection and others. Data was cleaned from KoboToolbox and exported to Microsoft excel, validated and then exported to STATA version 14 for analysis; chi-squared test, bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis will be performed on the data to relate factors independently associated with microbial burden on washroom door handles and hand rails of Mak-CHS. Conclusions: The study will create awareness to the management of the college and general public so that appropriate hygiene measures can be taken and followed by all students and staffs in the college to avoid community acquired infections.