Screening of the efficacy of some commonly used antibiotics in Ghana

Abstract

The objective of this study was to screen some commonly used antibiotics in Ghana for their efficacy in treating diseases so as to select sensitive organisms that can be used to design an assay in assessing their biological activity. The disc susceptibility test was used to screen stock antibiotics such as ampicilline, chloramphenicol, kanamycin and penicillin based antibiotics from different manufacturers (both local and foreign) which were obtained from different pharmacy shops against some bacteria species such as Salmonella typhi, Staphyloccus auresus and six strains of Escherichia coli. It was observed that both stock and field antibiotics (Antibiotics obtained from pharmacy shops for study) zone of inhibition were similar and compared with literature values. J916 (an E. coli isolate) and Salmonella typhi were found to be less sensitive to the penicillin-based antibiotics similar to literature values for both stock and pharmacy shop samples. This study revealed that the antibiotics produced by local and foreign pharmaceutical companies appear to be effective. In as much as this study demonstrate that, local and foreign pharmaceutical industries appear to be producing quality drugs, further studies are needed to substantiate this claim observed by this study, which was on a small scale. © 2009 Academic Journals Inc.