Microbial Contamination on Student Mobile Phones: Identification, Prevalence, and Antibiotic Susceptibility Profile in a University Setting

Mobile phones are portable electronic devices that become essential for professional and personal telecommunication in daily social life, but they are potentialreservoirs for pathogens and sources of healthcare associated infections.Students are more exposed to bacterial contamination because their mobile phones arerarely cleaned and are often operated without proper hand washing.Therefore, this study was aimed to identify, enumerate, showcase the percentage prevalenceand determine the antibiotic susceptibility profile of bacterial species isolated from mobile phones among some selected students of Umaru Musa YaraduaUniversityKatsina.Atotalof20swabsampleswererandomlycollectedfrommaleandfemalestudents'mobilephones.Thesampleswereculturedandprocessedusing standard microbiological procedures.Antibiotic susceptiblity profiles were determined using the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method.The data on bacterialloadrevealedthatahighcountwasdetectedonmalestudents'touchscreen(3.89×106)whilealowcountwasdetectedonfemalestudents'keypad(1.94×105).Allmobil e phone samples were contaminated with various species of bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumonia, Escherichia coli andPseudomonas aeruginosa.Among the isolated organisms Staphylococcus aureus, had the highest percentage prevalence at (42.9%), while Klebsiella pneumoniahadthelowestpercentageprevalenceat(10.0%).Thesensitivitytestshowededthatpefloxacin,gentamicin,ampiclox,zinacef,amoxicillin,rocephin,ciprofloxaci n,septrin, streptomycin, and erythromycin were effective against all isolates.The study confirmed that mobile phones harbor bacteria that pose a health threat tohandlers.Therefore, awareness programs regarding hand hygiene and discouraging the use of mobile phones in toilets to prevent health consequences arerecommended.