RESUMEN
Background: Paper currency is widely exchanged and because of the high frequency changing from hand to hand, could serve as vehicles for transmission of multi-resistant bacterial pathogens. The aim was to find out bacterial contaminations of Iraqi currencies collected from various communities and their susceptibility to antibiotics at Duhok city, Iraq. Methods: A total of 302 Iraqi currencies were collected from 8 community populations and analyzed by screened on Blood, Mannitol salt, MacConkey and Chocolate agar followed by the identification of the isolates using standard conventional bacteriological methods. Antibiotic susceptibility testing against fourteen drugs was carried out as per Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Results: Out of 302 collected samples, 96% showed bacterial contamination, of them 16% had multiple bacterial isolates. A total of 9 different bacterial species were isolated from six Iraqi currencies. Of them, (24.2%) was Bacillus subtillis followed by E. coli (14.6%), S. aureus (13.4%), Micrococcus (13.0%), S. albus (10.6%), P. aeruginosa (10.2%), Klbseiella (9.9%), Proteus (2.5%) and Enterobacter (1.6%).overall isolates exhibited high resistance to vancomycin, erythromycin, ampicillin and cefixime ,while absent or little resistance was against antibiotics like amikacin, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, azithromycin, ceftriaxone and rifampin. Conclusion: Study revealed that Iraqi currencies circulating in Duhok city was contaminated with different pathogenic and potential pathogenic bacteria including multi drug resistant strains. So the need to improve health consciousness among people while handling currency is an urgent issue.