A Study of Antibacterial Activity of Crude Extracts of Euphorbia Hirta Aligned With some Bacteria Related to Enteric Infections |

ABSTRACT:

Infectious diseases are major causes of morbidity andmortality in the developing world and accounts for about 50% of all deaths. InBangladesh, about 17% of all children admitted to the paediatric wards die ofdiarrhea (Alam et al., 2001). Some 5.8 million deaths each year in infants andchildren below 5 years are caused by enteric diseases worldwide (Amita et al.,2003). Records of morbidity and mortality occurring as a result of entericinfections are scanty in Nigeria. Most of the pathogens causing entericinfections have developed resistance to the commonly prescribed antibiotics.Bacterial resistance to antibiotics increases mortality, likelihood ofhospitalization and the length of stay in the hospital (Winstanley et al.,1997). For most bacteria, there is evidence that increased usage of aparticularly antimicrobial correlates with increased levels of bacterialresistance to that agent (Mordi and Erah, 2006). Spread of resistance, which istransferable amongst members of the enterobacteriaceae has been attributed tothe mobilization of drug resistance markers by a variety of agents encoded onplasmids, transposons and integrons (Amita et al., 2003). Isolation of bacterialess susceptible to regular antibiotics and recovery of resistant isolatesduring antibacterial therapy is now a global problem (Muhammad and Muhammad,2005).