Occurrence of Campylobacter jejuni in dog faeces from the streets of a Southern Chilean city.

Campylobacter jejuni is now world-wide recognized as a zoonotic agent of bacterial diarrhoea in human beings 2 1 2 . Many domestic animals are intestinal carriers of these bacteria and could be a probable source of human in­ fection M, Dogsparticulary puppies, may be responsible for the transmission of Campylo­ bacter to human contacts. Campylobacter iso­ lation rates varies between 6-52.2% depending on the group of dogs studied. Stray and ken­ neled dogs show the highest frequencies of these bacteria in their faeces 10.12. In southern Chile, the isolation ra te of Campylobacter was 51% in the first semester 1984 .