Abstract: Background: Street foods have been associated with health problems to their consumers with increased risk of mortality and reduced quality of life due to poor food handling and sanitary practices.
Objectives: To determine the occurrence of microbial agents in street foods through laboratory analysis and testing the response/resistance of pathogenic agents to anti-microbial drugs.
Materials and Methods: This was a microbial analysis of 150 samples of cooked street food chosen from rice and stew, beans, cakes, peppersoup, moi moi and fried meat selected through systematic random sampling technique.
Results: The highest occurrence of bacterial isolate was Vibrio sp with 60%, followed by Escherichia coli 53%, Streptococcus pneumoniae 49%, Aerococcus sp 48% ,while Actinomyces and Shigella dysenteriae occurred at 36% frequency each. The most occurring mycological species were Saccharomyces sp 44%, Verticillum sp 37% and Aspergillus niger 35%. On microbial sensitivity testing, Vibrio sp showed resistance to all antibiotics, E. coli showed moderate response to Erythromycin (30mm) and Shigella dysenteriae also showed moderate response to Chloramphenicol (31mm).
Conclusions: Hawked Street foods in Uyo Metropolis have shown to be of poor microbial quality.
Keywords: hawked foods, microbial, food contamination.
Title: CULTURE-DEPENDENT MICROBIAL ANALYSIS OF HAWKED STREET FOODS IN UYO METROPOLIS, SOUTHERN NIGERIA
Author: Emaediong Ibong Akpanekpo, Edidiong Ime Frank
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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