ABSTRACT
Waste effluents from hospitals contain high numbers of resistant bacteria. Among resistant strains' Gram negative bacilli are able to survive for a long time in the environment and act as natural reservoirs of resistant genes. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of antibiotic resistant Gram negative bacilli and the plasmid profile of multi resistant bacteria in hospital effluents. In this experimental study, the antibiotic resistance patterns of the isolated strains were assayed by disc diffusion method. The isolates were identified by biochemical methods in accordance with Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. Plasmid extraction was carried out by alkaline lysis technique. A total of 320 bacterial isolates were picked from the sewage samples. Gram-negative rods represented the main bulk [62.5%], followed by Gram-positive rods [34.4%] and Gram positive cocci [3.1%]. The most common isolates were Escherichia coli [33%] followed by Psudomonas aeruginosa [17 %]. The gram-negative rods were tested for their susceptibility for eight antibiotics. The results showed that gentamicin and cefttriaxone were the most effective antibiotics and ampicillin had the least efficacy. The results also showed that all of the isolates were multi-drug resistant and 6% of them were resistant to all of the tested antibiotics. Isolates with high multi-drug resistance profiles were found to possess multiple plasmids with sizes in the range of 1.5 to 24.5 KB. The results show that the multi-drug resistant bacteria are present in the hospital waste and could be threat for public health