Prevalence of Vibrio cholerae in different food samples in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Among the food borne disease outbreaks, cholera, caused by Vibrio cholerae, is a well known issue in Bangladesh. Present study attempted to randomly isolate V. cholerae from 40 types of food samples categorically including meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, street food, bakery shop food, fast food, sweets and dairy products. Cultural and biochemical tests revealed that all the samples harbored V. cholerae. The highest frequency of V. cholerae was observed in the chicken samples collected from Mailbag Market (4.2×10^7 cfu/g) and the lowest load was observed in the frozen meat sample collected from a super shop (1.1×10³ cfu/g). Such a bacterial load indicated a high risk to public health. The study of antibiogram of the isolates revealed high resistance against ampicilin, chloramphenicol, nalidixic acid, trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole, tetracycline, and cefotaxime, whereas sensitivity was observed against ciprofloxacin, neomycin, imipenem and erythromycin. Overall, our study found a significant number of Vibrio spp. including the drug resistant ones in the locally available common foods, which might pose serious public health hazard.