Multicenter bacteraemia among Sudanese children: Causative agents and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns

Bacteraemia is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in children worldwide. Therefore, bacteraemia continues to be increasingly a serious health problem that needs an immediate attention and treatment. A retrospective hospital-based study was conducted on positive blood cultures collected from 804 children (aged less than 10 years) including both genders in a period between 2012 and 2013 in three different medical services center in Khartoum state, Sudan, out of 804 tested blood samples, among whom 226 isolates were recovered from blood cultures. The majority of the children with bacteraemia (77.4%) were found to be less than one year old (49.1% male and 50.9% female). The most frequent pathogen was found to be Staphylococcus aureus (33.6%), followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae. (30.5%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (11.5%), Burkholderia cepacia (10.6%), Streptococcus spp., (7%), Escherichia coli (3.5%), Acinetobacter spp. (1.7%) and coagulase negative staphylococci (1.3%). This study shows the highest susceptibility rate of S. aureus to vancomycin (97.3%), and the lowest susceptibility rate (34.7%) was recorded for erythromycin. Staphylococcus aureus was the main etiological agent of bacteraemia in children, while the most isolates demonstrating susceptibility to vancomycin. Overall, erythromycin resistance was 65.3%. This information should be considered when empirical therapy is recommended for the treatment of children with bacteraemia. Most laboratories in Sudan use a single aerobic blood culture bottle for routine blood culture. So our recommendation is using aerobic in conjugation with anaerobic bottles in order to recover significantly more organisms.   Key words: Bacteraemia, children, antimicrobials, drug resistance, Sudan.