Bacterial contamination of mobile phones used by food vendors in Rumuolumeni, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Food vendors are essential in all socio-economic sectors in developing countries, they provide ready-to-eat food to the inhabitants and during this process, they could transmit harmful bacteria through their mobile phones. This study aims to ascertain if the phones used by food vendors could be a potential source of circulation of pathogenic bacteria. Phone swabs were obtained from the phones used by the food vendors from 10 different locations in Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rumuolumeni. The phone swabs were analyzed bacteriologically using standard methods. It was incubated for 24 hours, at 37 ^oC and the plate was examined for growth. Viable counts were also obtained using standard procedures. The total plate count of bacteria obtained from the samples ranged from 4.0 X 104 (sample 4) to 7.0 X 105 (sample 8) in total bacteria load of mobile phones. The total number of coliform bacteria ranged from 7 (sample 6) to 17 (sample 7). The total Staphylococcus aureus load has the highest occurrence of 9 while Salmonella typhi and Escherichia coli has the same number of occurrences of 2. Samples 5, 7, and 9 have the highest load of the bacteria (2 cfu/ml), while samples 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 have the same load of bacteria (1 cfu/ml). Biochemical characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella typhi were analyzed using catalase, citrate, indole, methyl red, urease, gas, vogas Proskauer, glucose, lactose, sucrose and mannose test. The study revealed that the mobile phones used by food vendors were contaminated by bacteria. It was recommended that food vendors be emboldened to show interest in tight personal hygiene to the mobile phones handled and develop active preventive strategies such as decontamination of mobile phones with alcohol-containing disinfectant to reduce cross-infection.