PARASITOLOGICAL STUDY OF TOILET DOOR HANDLES IN MADONNA UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, ELELE

Microorganisms are present on all surfaces, to which they were carried by many direct and indirect methods of transmission. Parasites contaminating toilet door handles in Madonna University Elele were assessed between August and November, 2021. The buildings and location of toilets were randomly selected. Sterile swabs moistened in sterile normal saline were used to swab the door handles in a tri-directional manner. The specimens were examined for parasites using zinc sulfate floatation and formol-ether sedimentation techniques. Of the fifty (50)samples,30(60%) showed positive pathogens isolate while 20(40%) had no case of parasitic contamination.This result showed a case of high prevalence of parasitological contamination of toilet door handles in Madonna University Elele, River state. There was no statistical difference between the positive and negative samples(p0.05). In the study, the parasites isolated were Entamoeba histolytica 18(60%), Ascaris lumbricoides 7(23%), Entamoeba coli 5(17%).The most common parasite isolated from the study was Entamoeba histolytica with a prevalence of 60%. Based on parasitic distributions according to location of door handle, girls' hostel had the highest prevalence and frequency 11(36.7%), followed by boys' hostel 8(26.7%), MLS lab 5(16.7%), School lab 4(13.2%) and finally Church with the least prevalence of 2(6.7%). The distribution of different species of parasites in the door handle shows that infectious diseases are transmitted from toilet door handles and are potential threat to public health and safety therefore certain measures should be taken such as frequent cleaning methods and good hand washing to reduce the incidence of parasite transmission.