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EMHJ-Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal. 2009; 15 (5): 1111-1118
in English
| IMEMR
| ID: emr-157417
ABSTRACT
A cross-sectional hospital-based study was carried out at Tikrit teaching hospital, Iraq, from October 2004 to September 2005, to identify the prevalence and etiology of nosocomial infectious diarrhoea among children under 5 years of age. Of 259 children admitted to the paediatric ward for reasons other than diarrhoea and hospitalized for more than 3 days, clinical and laboratory analysis of stool samples showed nosocomial diarrhoea in 84 children [32.4%]. The most common causative agents were enteropathogenic Escherichia coli [25.9%], Clostridium difficile [21.0%] and rotavirus [18.5%]. Single infectious agents caused 63.1% of the cases, while mixed infections were detected in 16.7%; in 20.2% of children the cause remained unknown