Did you know that some chicken meat in Nairobi has bacteria that can resist important antibiotics? The University of Nairobi did some tests and found out that a lot of E coli bacteria in chicken meat in Nairobi can be dangerous for people if they eat the meat undercooked or if the chicken isn’t handled properly.
E coli is a type of bacteria that lives in the intestines of people and animals. If you eat meat with E coli in it, you could get sick with things like pneumonia, urinary tract infections, or diarrhea.
Researchers at the University of Nairobi tested chicken meat from different places like sick birds, farm chickens, and chickens from markets in Nairobi.
They found that about 31.4% of the samples had E coli bacteria in them. The bacteria were resistant to many different antibiotics, which can make it hard to treat if you get sick from eating contaminated chicken.
The results of the study were published in a journal called Veterinary Medicine International. The researchers want people to know that it’s important to cook chicken thoroughly and handle it safely to avoid getting sick from these antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Some antibiotics, like nalidixic acid and chloramphenicol, had lower resistance rates compared to others. Amoxicillin and gentamicin were the most effective, with over 96% of bacteria being susceptible to them.
This shows that using antibiotics in farming might be causing bacteria to become resistant, even in healthy animals.
What’s really worrying is that over 81% of the bacteria were resistant to multiple antibiotics. Some bacteria were resistant to two, three, four, or even five or six different antibiotics. Ampicillin was the most common antibiotic in these resistant combinations, followed by tetracycline and cotrimoxazole.
The study suggests that using antibiotics in livestock without thinking about it too much has led to this problem. This isn’t just a problem in Kenya – it’s happening in other places too. Without good ways to keep track of antibiotic resistance, it’s hard to know just how big of a problem this is.
