PREVALENCE OF CONTAMINATING MICROORGANISMS IN ANTI-MALARIAL DRUGS SOLD IN CALABAR, CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA

The challenges to ensure proper preparation, storage, preservation and distribution of drugs are enormous. Very often, this results in the production and distribution of contaminated drugs. The study, therefore aimed to evaluate the prevalence of contaminating microorganisms in anti-malarial drugs sold in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.  This was carried out using standard microbiological procedures which included total aerobic bacterial plate count, isolation and characterization of microbial contaminants and physical parameters analysis.  It is evidence from the results that out of a total of 10 samples, only one sample was not contaminated by bacteria but for fungi, all the drugs sampled were contaminated. Bacillus subtilis was found to be the most prominent bacterial isolates with the frequency of occurrence of five (5) and 33.5%, followed by P. aeruginosa and S. aureus with the same frequency of three (3) and 20.0%, Lactobacillus sp. had frequency of two (2) and 13.3%, and Sporolactobacillus had frequency of one (1) and 6.6% while only one of the anti-malarial drugs had no contamination, that is 6.6% of the sample was not contaminated. Whereas Penicillium sp. was found to be the most predominant fungal isolates, with the highest frequency occurrence of six (6) and 46.2% followed by Candida alblicans with the frequency of three (3) and30.7% and Aspergillus niger had the least frequency of three (3) and 23.1%. This result reveals a high level of bacteria and fungi contaminants in the anti-malarial drugs sold in Calabar and makes need for intervention.