Enumerated Bacteria on Cooked Food Samples in Some Hotels in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

Kumasi is the capital of the Ashanti Region of Ghana and also the second largest city. Kumasi was selected for this study because out of 27,000 cholera cases in Ghana, Kumasi was one of the most affected. Levels of microbial counts on some cooked food samples in some selected hotels in Kumasi, the Ashanti Region of Ghana were determined. The hotels were selected by simple random sampling and ranged from three star to budget. Serial dilution of each food was prepared in buffered peptone water inoculated onto Plate Count Agar (PCA) for total mesophilic count, MacConkey Agar (MCA) for total coliform count and Violet Red Bile Glucose Agar (VRBGA) for total enterobacteriaceae count. Growth was counted and the bacterial counts were expressed to log₁₀ cfu/g. The agar with the highest colony count for Hotel 01 was MacConkey and the food with the highest number of bacteria was fufu (7.0 Log₁₀ cfu/g). Hotel 02 had PCA and MCA reporting the highest microbial count for beef in vegetable sauce (6.8 Log₁₀ cfu/g). In Hotel 03 tossed salad and fried rice were too numerous to count (TNTC) for all the media used. Hotel 04 reported boiled plain rice to be the food with the highest (6.5 Log₁₀ cfu/g) colony count on PCA. Vegetable sauce on MCA had the highest colony counts (7.2 Log₁₀ cfu/g) for Hotel 05. Most of the colony counts were above the WHO acceptable levels of <3 log 10 cfu/g indicating levels of contamination in the foods tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]