Isolation And Characterization Of Some Micro-organisms Contaminating The Air-Conditioning Systems of AL-Ramadi Maternity And Children Hospital

Abstract

A total of 1200 sampls of various swaps in Maternity and Children Hospital in Ramadi were collected during summer season;1/5/2004 - 30/10/2004. Sources of isolation included the hospital environment ( the floor, patients, beds), the internal air, air of ventilation pipes belonging to the hospital conditioned system with it’s two floors. The samples of the four source groups mentioned above consisted of 400 samples taken from the internal surfaces of air conditioning pipes and 400 samples from the air of internal hospital halls and 400 samples from the hospital inanimate environment such as ground and beds. The study was carried out with ten attempts. Each attempt included ten departments of the hospital. After isolation and identification of the isolates , the followings were found : -The Majority of the microbial isolates were found to be of bacterial origin with a percent of (85.6%) in the whole microbial isolates. -Fungal isolates took the second class with a percent of (8.9%) . -Some of the isolates recorded mixed cultures (bacteria and fungi),but undiagnosed like gram positive rods and fungal threads.Thier percentage was (5.4%) . -Aspergillus sp isolates were found to be predominant among the diagnosed mycotic agents (61.1%) while Candida albicans came in the second range (38.9%). -Gram negative bacteria possessed a higher percentage among other bacterial types which had a percent of 67.5%, while the percentage of gram positive bacteria was 32.5% . -In gram negative bacteria, Klebsilla pneumonia was the highest among the others, its percentage was 16.5% ,while Providencia bacteria was the lowest type with 0.9% . -Coagulase negative Staphylococcus had the highest percent which reached 14.3% , while the α- hemolytic Streptococcus had the lowest percent among the G+ve bacteria which reached 2.7% . -According to the results obtained, the internal surfaces of the airconditioning pipes consisted the highest microbial growth (bacteria, fungai and mixed isolates) in comparison with the isolated smears of the inner air of rooms, grounds and patient's beds. Also, the ground deck in the hospital had the greatest level in microbial pollution in comparison with the first deck.