[01] Jesper Leonard Vun Kien Fung, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [02] Jason Yew, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Melaka, Malaysia. [03] Indira Bairy, Department of Microbiology, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India. [04] Jessica Sushma D’Souza, Department of Microbiology, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India. [05] Kukkamalla Anand, Department of Microbiology, Melaka-Manipal Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India.

Smartphones are a part of almost every person’s life. They are brought everywhere along with their owners. They provide the perfect habitats for microorganisms where some of these may be potentially pathogenic and harmful. Therefore, it is imperative to clean the screens of smartphones. As such, this study sets out to investigate the microbial load on the screens of smartphones and the effectiveness of commercially available alcohol swabs in the reduction of microbial load on these screens as well as to assess the perception, awareness, cleaning habits of smartphones and the opinion of its significance among the members of Melaka-Manipal Medical College (MMMC), Manipal campus. A quasi-experimental study was conducted among the faculty members, non-teaching staff and undergraduate students of the college. An online questionnaire was distributed and the participants’ smartphones were swabbed for culture. A total of 112 responses were gathered. Data was analysed using Graphpad: Quickcalcs. Paired t-test was used. Findings showed that the median number of colonies cultured from the screens of smartphones was 24.5. Besides, a significant reduction of microbial load after the use of alcohol swabs was determined (P<0.001) with a 96.47% reduction. 69.8% of participants clean their smartphones, 26.4% cleans once a week, 90.6% are aware of microbes residing on their phones, 77.4% think that cleaning affects the microbial load significantly and 95% think that it is a hygienic practice to do so. In short, a high microbial load on smartphone screens were found which can be readily and almost completely removed by using alcohol swabs. The perception and frequency of cleaning smartphone screens were less than satisfactory. An effort should be made to increase awareness on this subject.

Alcohol, Microbial Load, Smartphones, Screens, Quasi-experimental Study

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