Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) remains a major cause of morbidity and death. We conducted a study to determine the incidence of surgical site infections and microbial pattern at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.

Patients and Methods: A prospective hospital based study was conducted at KCMC general surgical wards from November, 2010 to March, 2011. A total of 263 newly operated inpatients were enrolled but 27 patients among the group were lost on follow up visits and were therefore excluded from the study. So, only 236 patients completed the study’s one month follow up.

Results: Two hundred and thirty six patients were followed up for the development of surgical site infection. 18 patients developed features of surgical site infection. Four patients had culture negative results. One patient who developed SSI due to an infected implant died. Superficial SSIs constituted (61.1%) while deep SSI constituted (27.8%) and organ/space (11.1%). The overall SSI rate was 7.6%. Clean, clean contaminated, contaminated and dirty wounds had infection rates of 3.5%, 8.7%, 25.4% and 29.4% respectively. There were 15 bacterial isolates and multidrug resistance was also observed in a number of bacterial isolates.

Conclusion: The incidence of infection in our centre is low and the pattern of microbes causing surgical site infection at the centre has remained the same over time.