Bacterial Contamination and Susceptibility Pattern Among Blood and Blood Components Using Divergent and Non-Divergent Collection Methods at Armed Forces Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Background: Understanding the proportion of blood and blood products contamination during transfusion is important in developing infection control strategy in the health system. Therefore, this study was aimed to determine bacterial contamination and susceptibility patterns among blood and blood components at Armed Forces Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done on blood and blood components collected with both diverging and none-diverging methods. Simple random sampling method was applied to select blood and blood product units from the record form and 10 mL of sample was drawn from each blood and blood product. Culturing from collected blood and blood products and antimicrobial sensitivity tests were done. The collected data were entered and analyzed by SPSS statistical software version 20. Binary and multiple logistic regression analysis were done to see different factors and p-values less than 0.05 were taken as statistically significant. Results: A total of three hundred seventy six (376) units of blood and blood product samples, 188 from non-diverging and 188 from diverging blood donor collection methods were included. Among different blood group types, O+ blood and the majority of components were stored from one to five days. The overall bacterial contamination among blood and blood components were n = 17 (4.5%). Among them, n = 14 (7.4%) and n = 3 (1.6%) were collected with a non-diverging and diverging method, respectively. Staphylococcus epidermidis was the most dominant isolate. Most bacterial isolates were susceptible to different antimicrobial agents; however, Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed resistance for gentamicin. The non-diverging collection units of blood and components were significantly associated with bacterial contamination. Of all, n = 5/17 (29.4%) isolated bacteria were multidrug resistant. Conclusion: The bacterial contamination of blood and blood components collected with diverging method was lower and recommended to use this collection method from donors.

Community Wastewater-Based Surveillance Can Be a Cost-Effective Approach to Track COVID-19 Outbreak in Low-Resource Settings: Feasibility Assessment for Ethiopia Context.

Wastewater surveillance systems have become an important component of COVID-19 outbreak monitoring in high-income settings. However, its use in most low-income settings has not been well-studied. This study assessed the feasibility and utility of wastewater surveillance system to monitor SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The study was conducted at nine Membrane Bio-reactor (MBR) wastewater processing plants. The samples were collected in two separate time series. Wastewater samples and known leftover RT-PCR tested nasopharyngeal swabs were processed using two extraction protocols with different sample conditions. SARS-CoV-2 wastewater RT-PCR testing was conducted using RIDA GENE SARS-CoV-2 RUO protocol for wastewater SARS-CoV-2 RNA testing. Wastewater SARS-CoV-2 RNA RT-PCR protocol adaptation, optimization, and detection were conducted in an Addis Ababa, Ethiopia context. Samples collected during the first time series, when the national COVID-19 case load was low, were all negative. Conversely, samples collected during the second time series were all positive, coinciding with the highest daily reported new cases of COVID-19 in Ethiopia. The wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 surveillance approach is feasible for Addis Ababa. The COVID-19 wastewater based epidemiological approach can potentially fill the evidence gap in distribution and dynamics of COVID-19 in Ethiopia and other low-income settings.