Resistant E. coli isolated from smallholder pig farms in Lira, Uganda

Abstract: Uganda is an East African country with a fast-growing population and has one of the world’s lowest gross domestic product per capita. Most of the population live in rural areas and agriculture is the country’s most important source of income. There are about 4 million pigs in Uganda, most are kept at smallholder farms, where they are an important source of income, and are most often sold to traders when in need of money. Only 5% of the pig-keepers in Uganda hold the pigs for own consumption. The traders often sell the pigs to slaughter slabs were the hygiene is suboptimal. Antibiotic resistance is one of the great global concerns of our time. Bacterial resistance can be both natural and acquired and can be transferred in-between bacteria. The acquired resistance is driven by natural selection and use of antibiotic drugs. Therefore, the use of antibiotics must be controlled, especially the treatment of animals. In some places the misuse of antibiotics is vast, and it is sometimes used prophylactically and as growth promotors. The use of antibiotics is uncontrolled, and drugs can be bought over the counter in many places around the world, Uganda is an example of such a place. Moreover, bacteria carrying genes for antibiotic resistance can spread from animals to humans via the food-chain. In some countries, including Sweden, there are national surveillance programs to observe the use of antibiotics and the resistance in the population. One strategy of surveillance is to use indicator-bacteria, investigating resistance in a normal intestinal bacterium such as Escherichia (E.) coli to indicate the overall resistance and selective pressure in a population. In this study, pigs from twenty smallholder farms around Lira in northern Uganda, were sampled and investigated regarding the presence of antibiotic resistance, using E. coli as an indicator bacterium. The farmers were also interviewed on their use of antibiotic drugs. The results showed that 67% of the farms had treated their pigs with antibiotics during the last year. Out of the 53 samples, 88% were resistant to sulfamethoxazole, 54% to tetracycline and 17% to trimethoprim. Further, 19% were multidrug resistant, e.g. resistant to three or more antibiotic classes.