Prevalence and antibiotic resistant Shigellae among primary school children in urban Calabar, Nigeria.

In a recent study, involving the examination of 593 stool samples obtained from randomly selected children from three primary schools in Calabar, Shigella spp. were isolated from 123 (20.7%) of the samples. The infection rate was highest among the younger children with (64.2%) 79/123 of the isolates coming from children under 10 years of age. Infection rate was comparable among boys and girls (p = 0.1). Only two species of Shigella were isolated viz: Shigella flexneri 12.0% (71/593) and Shigella sonnei 8.8% (52/593), in this study. The infection rate was highest in the Government Public Primary school, which also had the highest ratio of pupils per toilet. In all, 24 (19.5%) of the isolates were sensitive to all of the nine antimicrobial agents tested while 67 (54.5%) were resistant to two or more antibiotics. The data generated from this study show that there is a high infection rate of shigellosis among primary school children in this study area and calls for better health education, improved and sustainable sanitation and provision of more functional toilets with running water in the primary schools.