Abstract

BACTERIAL CONTAMINATION ON MOBILE PHONE DEVICES OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN AL- QURNA EDUCATION COLLEGE- BASRAH UNIVERSITY

Kawakib I. Al-Zubaidy*

Abstract

The world around us is containing of many kinds of microorganisms since the undergraduate students are using their mobile phones on daily basis and most of the time. So these devices have become a potential source of microorganisms to them. Therefore, this study was implemented to determine the bacterial contamination existing on mobile phones, which are used by undergraduate students in Qurna - Education College in Basra University. Eighty samples from mobile phones that used by undergraduate students in the biology and Arabic departments were collected by using wet sterile swabs in transporting media to detect the presence of bacteria, divided into forty samples per department (20 female and 20 male). The swabs have been cultured on a different media in order to determine all contaminated bacteria on these devices. At the end, the bacterial isolates have been identified with Vitek2. The study results have showed that mobile phone devices from both departments (Female & male) have been contaminated with at least one or more bacterial isolates. Forty-seven of isolates were obtained among eighty samples, some of them were non- pathogenic such as Staphylococcus saprophyticus and Staphylococcus epidiermidis and others were pathogenic such as Staphylococcus aureus, E.coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pantoea spp and Salmonella typhi. Also, the results indicated that the percentage of contamination of mobile phones in the department of biology were 72.5% which is higher than Arabic department percentage (45%) as the results of the gender factor showed that the percentage of contamination for males and females were almost the same in biology department (51.72 : 48.27%). On the contrary, the percentage of contamination in Arabic department for males were higher than females (61.11: 38.88%).

Keywords: Bacterial-contamination, mobile phones, students, microorganisms.