Introduction The choice of antibiotic treatment for early onset infection (EOI) must be driven by hospital specific guidelines, based on prevalent organism and their sensibility; thus it was decided to undertake this work to identify the most frequently causative bacterial agents as well as their sensibilities with usually prescribed antibiotics in our unit.

Method The data included in this retrospective study integrate the positive results from blood culture and\or cerebrospinal liquid culture of 51 newborns in the first 7 days of life, suspected of EOI, between January 2000 and December 2005.

Results The blood culture was positive in 96% of cases and for the study of LCR in 18%. The germs most frequently identified in the blood are SGB 14/49 (28, 57%), and E. coli 11/49 (22, 44%); however the Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) 27/49 (55, 10%) dominated slightly over Gram-positive cocci (GPC) 20/49 (40, 8%).

Discussion As in developing countries, this study shows predominance of GNB over GPC, nevertheless, there was a marked progressive emergence of SGB.

Conclusion While waiting for other studies, we recommended that third generation cephalosporin plus aminoglycoside be used as empiric coverage of EOI while culture results are ascertained.