Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Naira note: Potential Environmental Material for Transmitting Bacterial Pathogens among Food Dealers in Umuahia, Nigeria

Ekene S. Odo, Gloria N. Ebe, Michael N. Umeh, Daniel A. Nwaubani, Israel C. Omekara

International Journal of TROPICAL DISEASE & Health · pp. 15–20 · Published 8 Nov 2021

10.9734/ijtdh/2021/v42i1630524

Abstract

Inanimate objects can serve as environmental vehicles for transmitting pathogenic bacteria among individuals in the population. Our study revealed that of the 72 naira notes examined, 58 samples representing 80.6% had bacterial contaminants. The bacterial isolates were Staphylococcus aureus (70.8%), Salmonella spp. (51.4%), Escherichia coli (44.4%), Shigella spp. (22.2%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa. (18.1%), and Proteus spp. (1.4%). The naira notes examined were all obtained from food dealers particularly fish sellers, food vendors, and meat sellers. The presence of these bacterial pathogens on naira notes handled by those food dealers is an important public health hazard as they can contaminate food leading to foodborne diseases and intoxications. Our study found that lower denominations of currency notes (naira), were mostly contaminated by these pathogens and this could be as a result of their frequent use in daily transactions.

Currency Escherichia coli foodborne diseases Pseudomonas aeruginosa Staphylococcus aureus

Cited by 0

No indexed citations yet.

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

21

Page views

0

PDF downloads

2

Outbound clicks

0

Citations

Views over time

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.