Microbial contamination of selected nonsterile pharmaceuticals in OPD pharmacy of a teaching hospital in Sri Lanka

A pharmaceutical product must be effective, safe and should be of good quality to assure their sustainability in the competitive pharmaceutical industry. The quality of the pharmaceutical products can be influenced by the presence of microorganisms (MO). In addition to sterile preparation contamination of non-sterile pharmaceuticals (NSP) should be monitored according to British Pharmacopeia (BP) microbial limits for the preparations. The objective of this study was to investigate the contamination of MOs of NSPs. Total 05 drug samples out of bulk opened containers were collected from OPD unit of a teaching hospital, Sri Lanka. The total aerobic bacterial count and fungal contamination was tested by surface spread plate method and checked with the specified limits in BP. The contaminated microorganisms were identified using microbial identification methods. According to the results 1/5 (20%) of the tested samples were contaminated with microorganisms and 4/5 (80%) of the samples were free from contamination. The identified microorganisms were Aspergillus species, gram negative Spore forming Bacilli and Staphylococcus aureus.