Antimicrobial susceptability pattern of commonly isolated gram-negative pathogens from some hospitals in Yangoon

In Yangon hospital-acquired infections with multiresistant Gram-negative bacteria is becoming incerasingly prevalent.In this study, antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of 575 isolated from various clinical specimens including pus , wound swabs, sputum and blood of the patients attending Yangon General Hospital and some other hospitals from January to December, 2000 were studied. Among them, 270 isolates were Pseudomonas spp, whereas 208 and 97 isolates were identified as members of the Enterolates were identified as members of the Enterobacteriaceae family (Escherichia coli, Citrobacter spp, Klebsiella spp and other coliforms) and Acinetobacter spp respectively. It was found that 35.2

of Pseudomonas spp 37.1

of enterobacteria and 57.7

of Acinetobacter spp were multiresistant (to four or more antimicrobial agents). Antimicrobial agents that were used for antimicrobial susceptibility testing were Amikacin, Cefuroxime, Cetriaxone, Ceftazidime, Ciprofloxacin, Sparfloxacin and Gentamycin. This study showed that Pseudomonas, enterobacteria and Acinetobacter have become resistant to most frontline antimicrobials such as third generation cephalosporins, aminoglycosides and quinolones this presents an alarming situatiion in hospitals that need to be controlled in time by amultidisciplinary approach before further sperad and emergence of other multiresistant bacteria occur.

Nutritional status and intestinal parasitosis in school-enrolled and non-enrolled school-age children in Yangon

In Myanmar, over 38 percent of children in the age-group 5-9 years were never enrolled in school in 1990. Also, there is a lack of information on the comparative prevalence of malnutrition and intestinal parasitosis among school-enrolled and non-enrolled school-age children in Myanmar. We, therefore, undertook a cross-sectional survey comprising 3325 school children from 13 primary schools and 164 non-enrolled school-age children from neighbouring quarters in Tharkayta and Mingaladon townships of Yangon during December 1993. Height and weight of the children were measured and a total of 944 stool samples, including 148 non-enrolled children, were examined for the presence of intestinal parasites. Expressing the nutritional status as standard deviation scores for weight-for-height, the prevalence of wasting among 5-10 years non-enrolled school-age children was 19.8 percent, while that for school children of similar age was 13.9 percent. In addition, non-enrolled school-age children had higher infection rates than school children regarding Ascaris Lumbricoides (66.9 percent vs 50.1 percent), Trichuris trichiura (38.5 percent vs 23.9 percent), and Giardia lamblia (5.4 percent vs 2.7 percent). The policy implication of this study is that health and nutritional status of non-enrolled school-age children needs to be promoted and this should be partly solved by the provision of regular and periodic mass chemotherapy against major intestinal parasitoses influencing nutritional status.