All the hospital surfaces or articles are likely to carry pathogens and so the healthcare personnel must follow the hand hygiene practices in the hospital, to prevent the transmission of infections. Further, the fingerprint biometric attendance devices get infected, after being touched by the infected hands of healthcare personnel. This study was undertaken to assess the antibiotic resistance pattern of pathogenic bacteria isolated from hands of healthcare personnel as well as from fingerprint recognising surface of biometric devices (FRBD).31 (56.3%) hand-swabs and 15 (27.3%) swabs from biometric devices showed growth of the pathogenic bacteria. Escherichia coli was the most common isolate from hand swabs and out of which,5 were resistant to all routine antibiotics whereas Klebsiella spp.5 (33.3%) was found to be the most common isolates from the biometric devices, out of which 2 were resistant to all routinely used antibiotics. All the gram positive bacteria from both sources were Methicillin resistant. Out of all 33 gram negative bacteria,3 isolates were ESBL producers and 10 were Carbapenemase producers. It is important to reduce transmission of these multidrug resistant organisms which can be achieved by following hand hygiene protocol strictly and use of non-touch type of biometric device should be encouraged.
