Incidence of multiple antibiotic resistances in organisms isolated from cases of infantile diarrhoea in a Nigerian oral rehydration therapy clinic.

A total of 247 bacterial isolates were obtained from diarrhoeal patients aged 0-60 months in an oral rehydration therapy clinic in Ibadan and tested for sensitivity to 11 antibiotics using the disc diffusion method. Fifty isolates obtained from apparently healthy age-matched controls were similarly tested. The results show that 6(2.4%) of the isolates obtained from the diarrhoeal children were resistant to all the 11 antibiotics used in the test and that most of the others were resistant to several antibiotics. Similarly, a very considerable percentage of isolates obtained from children in the control group were found to be resistant to several antibiotics. It is therefore apparent that there is a high incidence of multiply-antibiotic-resistant isolates within the sample environment.