The steady growth of urban population has necessitated the proliferation of wayside food and medicines vendors. These vendors include a large population of individuals with very little or no knowledge and training on basic food safety and drug matters. They are neither properly trained nor fully aware of the serious health dangers posed by microbial contamination of their wares. Therefore, from place of preparation to roadsides where the foods are sold, the chances of contamination by pathogens are significantly high. Some of these street vended foods and medicines are ready-to-eat salads, vegetables, fruits, cooked foods, herbal remedies and concoctions, which can be consumed directly from the point of purchase. Poor hygiene at the point of preparation is sufficient to cause food borne outbreak of epidemiological significance while the medicines innumerable health consequences and consequent public health challenge. Poor storage system and frequent unhygienic exposure of prepared vegetable salads and medicines add to their microbial load. Some of the communities in developing countries do not have good sources of portable water for the preparation of these vital life products. It is not unlikely that some of these products are prepared with faecally contaminated water taken from local ponds and open streams. Daily interactions with Escherichia coli, Shigella spp and Salmonella spp which cause diarrhoea, dysentery and other serious gastrointestinal disturbances have been adequately documented. The target of this review is to highlight major public health concerns associated with foods and medicines vended in Nigeria, a developing country.

Objectives This study examines the rationale, if any, behind combining the extracts from the fruits of Alchornea cordifolia and Pterocarpus santalinoides and aerial parts of Cassytha filiformis in the traditional treatment of diarrhoegenic bacterial infections. Results Four diarrhoegenic bacterial isolates: Salmonella typhi, Shigellae dysenteriae, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus were used and their antibiotic susceptibility screening showed that they were multi-antibiotic resistant. The extracts exhibited activity against all the test isolates with minimum inhibitory concentration values ranging from 3.125 to 12.5 mg/mL. From the checkerboard assay, the fractional inhibitory concentration indices showed that C. filiformis has antagonistic and indifference activities in combination with either P. santalinoides or A. cordifolia. This showed that the combination of extracts from the fruits of A. cordifolia and P. santalinoides and aerial parts of C. filiformis is counterproductive and invalidates any claim for positive results in the management of diarrhoegenic bacterial infections.

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Background: Morinda citrifolia fruits are consumed by humans in tropical areas of Africa due to their nutritional and medicinal values. Methods: The fresh fruit of M. citrifolia were harvested, washed with clean water, dried under a shade, pulverized and extracted with methanol in a Soxhlet’s extractor. The crude methanolic filtrate was subjected to phytochemical analysis and fractionation using ethyl acetate, butanol, distilled water and n-hexane. The isolates, which comprises Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi and Candida albicans, were collected from diarrhoiec stool of patients aged 0-5 years using standard procedure. Antibiotic susceptibility assay was carried out using disc diffusion method. The antimicrobial susceptibility test of the fruit extract and fractions was carried out using agar well diffusion method. Results: All the isolates were susceptible to the extract and the fractions with MICs range from 3.125 mg/mL to 12.5 mg/mL. S. aureus and S. typhi were resistant to more than two conventional antibiotics. Conclusion: Crude and fractions of M. citrifolia have excellent antibacterial and antifungal activities against multiple antibiotic resistant strains of S. aureus, S. typhi and C. albicans.

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