MRSA is a common nosocomial pathogen that causes the infections in the intensive care units and other parts of the hospital it is important we screen our staff for nasal carriage of MRSA as it could help to control the spread of this pathogen from the health care workers to the patients as reported in some studies world over. Determine the prevalence of nasal MRSA colonization in health care workers in our institution and to determine the effectiveness of mupirocin in decolonizing the MRSA. The ethical committee permission was taken for conducting this study, and all study participants were provided with informed and written consent. The health care workers, included nurses, physicians, and technicians from each person nasal swabs were collected from anterior nares and subjected to culture, biochemical testing and susceptibility testing with the oxacillin disc by disc diffusion method as per the CLSI guidelines. We measured the proportion of health care workers testing positive for nasal MRSA colonization and calculated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) by using the epi info biostatic software. The prevalence of nasal colonization with MRSA was 5.8% (95% confidence interval 2.54% to 11.10%). with MSSA was 10.87% (95% confidence interval 6.21% to 17.29%).Sex wise: males 6.06% , females 5.71% .Profession wise: Nurses 62.5% followed by Technicians 37.50%., After treatment with mupirocin repeat three swabs were negative . Surveillance for MRSA and eradication of the carrier state reduces the rate of MRSA infections and mupirocin was found to be effective in decolonizing nasal MRSA colonization in our study.
