Abstract:
Background: Diarrheal disease remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality mainly among under five
years of children in low and middle income countries. Bacteria, particularly gram-negative enteric bacterial
pathogens are the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in children, especially in developing countries. The
challenge of antibiotic resistance is other problem that becoming getting increased day by day alarmingly, hence
results infections due to enteric pathogens either more difficult to treat or untreatable. Thus the study was
designed to determine bacterial etiologies of diarrhoea and antimicrobial resistance profile of the isolates among
under-five years children attending at Mizan-Tepi university teaching hospital
Method: Cross-sectional study was conducted at Mizan-Tepi university teaching hospital from January to April,
2023. A systematic sampling technique was used to select study participants. Stool samples were collected from
selected children under five years of age and inoculated onto MacConkey & SS/XLD media. Those show the
growth of microorganisms was identified by biochemical tests, and then antimicrobial sensitivity tests were done
by disk diffusion method against selected classes of antimicrobials for the isolated organism. The data was
entered into epidata version 4.0.2 and analyzed by SPSS version 26.0. Descriptive statistics, such as frequencies
and percentages were computed and the results were presented as text, tables and/or graphs.
Results: A total of 344 bacterial isolates were isolated from stool sample of 298 diarrheic under-five year
children. Ninety nine percent of cultured stool samples were positive at least for one type of bacterial species. The
predominant isolated bacteria were Escherichia coli 119(34.6%), followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae 51(14.8%)
and Shigella species 39(11.3%). Salmonella typhi and others Salmonella species accounted for 17(4.9%) and
19(5.5%) respectively. The range of resistance for tested isolates against selected antimicrobial was ranged from
0% to 66.7%. Escherichia coli showed relatively higher resistance against amoxicillin-clavulanate 67/119(56.3%)
and doxycycline 66/119 (55.5%). The rate of resistance to cefotaxime was 12/19(63%) for Salmonella species,
8/17(47%) for Salmonella typhi and 16/39 (41%) for Shigella species. The overall prevalence of multidrugresistant isolates was 140/344 (40.7%), of which 109/140/ (77.9%) and 31/140 (22.1%) were MDR and XDR
respectively.
Conclusion and recommendation: In this study, the isolated enteric bacteria consist of potential pathogens of
gastrointestinal tract infections and normal fecal coliforms. The rates of drug resistant bacteria against tested
antibiotic in diarrheic under-five year children were high. This highlights the importance of implementing the
most effective public measurement to prevent further emergency and spread of multidrug resistant bacteria
