الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The main factors that contribute to the occurrence of foodborne diseases are poor personal hygiene habits of the food handlers, the cooking and storage of food at inappropriate temperatures, the acquisition of raw materials from unreliable sources and the use of poorly sanitized equipment. Since patients have a greater risk of becoming ill when exposed to potential foodborne pathogens and given that the food services need to provide a wide variety of foods, appropriate food handling practices must be maintained for hospitalized patients.Hospital food services are aimed to provide in-patients with nutritious meals for their recovery and health and to afford them with a nutritional model with meals appropriate to their specific health conditions. Our aim during this study was to assess some microbiological parameters of food served in a University Hospital in Alexandria. The microbiological tests performed were:total plate count, total and fecal coliforms counts were detected, estimation of E. coli count.In the current study 280 food samples were collected in the period between 40 were in the form of processed food samples and 140 non-processed samples, collected randomly from different hospital wards.The present study demonstrates that served meals in the university hospital constitutes a likely potential hazard to the patient’s health. The presence of E. coli in processed and non-processed food indicate fecal contamination, thereby suggesting the possible risk of infection involved in the consumption of such food.The achieved results in the current study allow concluding that processed and non-processed food at the hospital kitchen was contaminated with different types of microorganisms due to bad hygiene. Furthermore, the examined samples of non processed food especially tomato and cucumber and processed food especially rice and
meat were more contaminated with the highest level of microorganisms because such products may receive more handling during preparation (vegetables were not probably washed) as well as the packaging of processed food extremely hot, also all food items were added together in the same plate and transportation which act as a source of contamination and during processing which considers the big source of contamination.In this study percentage of un-satisfactory was apparently high for processed and non-processed samples were 35.7% 72.1% respectively for ACC (table 7) while for E.
coli count percentage of un-satisfactory was for processed and non-processed samples were 7.1 % 30.6 % respectively (figure 14) and this considered to be hazardous percent. Hospital kitchen should establish, develop and implement a system of preventive control designed to improve the safety of meals served to patients, known as HACCP.