Prevalence of Methicillin and Vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus on the touch screen of automated teller machines in Dhaka city.

Abstract

In today’s world, the emerging infectious diseases are the major threat to human health and cause serious fatal outcome in both local and global perspective1,2. The proliferation of pathogenic microorganisms including bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites into the human body through contaminated hand, food, water and dust particles may cause diseases like diarrhea and dysentery 3-5. The use of electronic device such as taps, ATM machine, computer, telephones etc. are increasingly being used to reduce the work load and time 6,7. In public health point of view the surface of these devices may act as one of the major and common routes of pathogenic microbes by which they can easily spread8,9. Several studies have already been conducted throughout the world on the presence of pathogenic contamination on the touch screen of electronic devices like ATM booth, public telephone booths, keypad of mobile phones and computers 3,9. As described in early studies the mobile phones, computer keyboards and automated teller machines (ATM) are now becoming the source of infection because of the vast dermal contact with the key panel10-13. Previous study suggested that most noteworthy pathogens such as Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Staphylococcus alpha haemolyticus, Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus subtilis, coliforms, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and Acinetobacter calcoaceticus have been found from the surface of different electronic devices 14. The probability of dissemination of such microbial contaminates is very high in densely populated country like Bangladesh where the major community doesn’t maintain the personal hygiene and sanitation procedure8. Therefore, increased use of Automated Electronic devices by the people who are not aware of the sanitation and hygiene may pose potential threat to public health. 15-19. Considering all the facts, this study attempted to find out the frequency of multidrug resistant strains (MDR) as well as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) on the touch screen of automated teller machines (ATMs) of different banks.