Association of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria with Sanitation of Street Vendors Food

A cross-sectional study was conducted on street-vended food randomly from different areas of Kathmandu Valley to assess the number of viable bacteria in street food, distribution of different bacteria, antibiotics resistance profile of isolated bacteria, Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), and Vancomycin-Resistant S. aureus (VRSA) in Kathmandu valley. Altogether 339 isolates were identified from one hundred eighty (180) food samples. The average mean plate count ranges from the highest TMTC to the lowest 3.26*108 CFU/ml. In this study, four different spp. of bacteria were identified from different food samples, among them, Escherichia coli (E. coli) was the most frequent isolate 147(43.36%) followed by Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) 120(35.39%), Salmonella spp. 51(15.04%) and Shigella spp. 21(6.19%). S. aureus was susceptible to penicillin (95%) followed by amoxicillin (75%), ciprofloxacin (60%), and nitrofurantoin (57.5%). E. coli was highly susceptible to ciprofloxacin (63.3%) but the Salmonella isolates showed sensitivity towards Amoxicillin which is (76.5%) and Shigella spp. was highly susceptibility towards penicillin (100%) and ciprofloxacin (100%). Distribution of (Multi-Drug Resistant) MDR among total isolates was found to be the highest in Shigella spp. (100%) followed by Salmonella spp. (76.4%), S. aureus (70%) and E. coli (69.38%). Out of 339 isolates, 93 isolates were MRSA and 81 isolates were VRSA, 57 were both MRSA and VRSA. This study showed that the majority of street-vended food items in Kathmandu valley were contaminated with one or more different multi-drug resistant pathogenic bacteria. Therefore, there is a dire need to implement stringent public health measures to mitigate food-borne diseases.