DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2015.v03i05.068

Pages: 2132-2134

Bio-aerosols are airborne particles that are living (bacteria, viruses, fungi) or originate from living organisms. The health effect of bio-aerosols includes infectious diseases, acute toxic effects, allergies, cancer and threat of bioterrorism. Hence monitoring of these bio-aerosols in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) by surface swabbing from various sites and air sampling by settle plate count (SPC) method was the prime goal of our study. The Material and Methods in The study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital from Jan-Dec.2010. A total of 403 samples were collected from various sites by surface swabbing, transported to laboratory in Cary-Blair media and inoculated on Muller-Hinton agar (MH). If grown isolates were indentified and subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). MH agar plates were used for SPC. The Results were four isolates (1%) were detected from the samples, 2 of Klebsiella spp, 1 of CONS and 1 of Pseudomonas spp, with variable AST patterns. In Conclusion Bio-aerosol monitoring in hospitals provides information for epidemiological investigation of nosocomial infectious diseases, research into airborne microorganism spread and control, monitoring bio hazardous procedures and use as quality control measure to determine the quality of indoor air.