The burden of antimicrobial resistance at tertiary care hospital, southern Ethiopia: a three years’ retrospective study

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem that crosses international boundaries and spread between continents easily. Hence, information on the existence of the causative microorganisms and their susceptibility to commonly used antibiotics are essential to enhance therapeutic outcome. METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted retrospectively at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital. The culture and antibiotic sensitivity data of the isolates were collected from the record books of the microbiology unit for the study period after official permission obtained from the institutional review board. The data entered and analyzed using statistical package for social science software version 20. RESULT: A total of 693 bacteria were retrieved, of these 435(62.77%) were gram-negative and the rest 258(37.23%) were gram-positive. Most of the isolates were from a urine sample. Among gram positives isolates, S. aureus and from gram negatives Klebsiella spp are the most recurrent isolate. Almost a remarkable resistance was observed to most of the antibiotics mainly, penicillin G (81.8%) and cotrimoxazole (81.1%), for gram-positive bacteria. The gram-negative bacteria also show resistance to ampicillin (92.5%), tetracycline (85%) and cotrimoxazole (93.1%). CONCLUSIONS: Nearly all isolate show substantial rates of resistance to most of the antibiotic that is frequently used in the study area. As already known we want to emphases on the importance of performing continuous monitoring of drug susceptibility to help the empirical treatment of bacterial agents to a health professional in the region. In addition, this data might help policymakers to control of antibiotics resistance.