Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Campylobacter jejuni in raw retail chicken meat in Metropolitan Accra, Ghana

Although, Campylobacter spp. are a major cause of foodborne gastroenteritis, its occurrence and antimicrobial resistance traits have not been well defined in low income countries, particularly in Africa. In this study, retail chicken was sampled (n = 400) between February 2019 to January 2020 in Metropolitan Accra, Ghana, to determine the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Campylobacter jejuni. Raw chicken samples were obtained in wet markets (n = 315) and supermarkets (n = 85) and each subjected to direct plating and broth enrichment according to standard culture methods for Campylobacter spp. with the identity of presumptive positive colonies confirmed by MALDI-TOF. The susceptibility of isolates to antibiotics commonly used for campylobacteriosis in humans (in order to reflect the One Health significance of Campylobacter at the human-food interface) were then assessed by disc diffusion. A prevalence of 38.3% was recorded and all isolates were confirmed as Campylobacter jejuni. Enrichment yielded 127 positives while direct plating yielded 55 positives with low level of agreement in detection between these assays (Kappa = 0.15). Among samples positive by direct plating, the mean Campylobacter count was 1.9 log₁₀ CFU/g (sd ±0.8). About 13% (7/55) of the samples positive by direct plating contained counts of 3log and above. Samples from the wet market yielded more positives than those from the supermarket with the rate of isolation from wet markets being 1.6 times that of the supermarket. Among 182 isolates characterized for their antimicrobial susceptibility, resistance to fluoroquinolones was 99.5%, tetracyclines 100% and macrolides 26.9%. Multi-drug resistance was also observed in 26.9% of the screened isolates. The findings point to a potential high level of exposure of humans to Campylobacter jejuni through chicken meat and thus the need for education on hygienic preparation and handling of raw chicken. High rates of resistance to classes of antimicrobials critically important for treating Campylobacter infections in humans; fluroquinolones and macrolides, affirm the need for stronger regulatory control of antimicrobials and enhanced antimicrobial stewardship in chicken production.