Prevalence of antimicrobial resistance of Escherichia coli isolated from poultry birds (chicken) in Kabowa Rubaga division, Kampala district

Abstract

Poultry farming is one of the fastest growing livestock sectors in Uganda with chicken production being the main type of poultry production. The poultry population of Uganda was projected to be about 32.6 billion birds for the year 2006/2007 according to FAO. Of these, about 80% was comprised of the free range indigenous breeds whilst the remaining 20% is commercial types mainly composed of the exotic. Increasing demand for poultry products provides ready market, this calls for increased production and product quality by the producers to cope up with the demand from consumers and competition from other producers. In this, farmers have employed different ways of ensuring quality of the products and health of the birds. Some statistics has shown increase in egg production from 882,523,000 numbers of eggs in 2015 to 882,567,000 number of eggs in 2016 (UBOS, 2017). One of the ways employed is having a good health management system, having proper standard infrastructure and feeding the birds with food additives which boost bird’s growth rate and body meat. Farmers are employing the use of antibiotics to prevent infections and as growth promoters by adding them in feeds. However most of the antibiotics used are meant for treating infections. Continued usage of these antibiotics affects the normal microbiota of the birds leading to them getting resistant to antibiotic agents being used frequently. Since E. coli is one of those microorganisms and one of the major causes of motility due to infections by pathogenic serotypes leading to major losses, concern must be put on the biosecurity of both the birds and humans together with the production of good quality organic products. There is growing scientific evidence that the use of antibiotics in food animals leads to the development of resistant pathogenic bacteria that can reach humans through the food chain.