A record number of countries have reported antimicrobial resistance, making an important step in the fight against drug resistance. The data they release, however, “shows that a worrying number of bacterial infections are increasingly resistant to the drugs available to treat them,” recently worried the World Health Organization (WHO). In a press release, she stressed the importance of “protecting available antimicrobials” and developing new molecules “to effectively treat infections in order to preserve the gains of the past century and secure the future”.
Three years after the release of the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) report in 2018, participation in the system has increased. It now collects data from more than 64,000 surveillance sites that have recruited more than two million patients in 66 countries, while in 2018 the system had 729 surveillance sites in 22 countries. In addition, more countries are reporting on the antimicrobial resistance indicator.
“The high rates of resistance to the antimicrobials often used to treat common infections, such as urinary tract infections or certain types of diarrhea, show that the world is short of effective means to fight these diseases,” said the WHO. The UN agency fears that this development is furthered by the inappropriate use of antibiotics during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The data show that only a small proportion of patients with Covid-19 need antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections”, notes the WHO, adding that it has published “guidelines advising, unless there is a clinical indication, antibiotic treatment or prophylaxis for patients with a mild form of Covid-19 or for those in whom the disease is suspected or confirmed and who present with moderate symptoms ”.
Source: WHO
–
A record number of countries have reported antimicrobial resistance, making an important step in the fight against drug resistance. The data they report, however, “shows that a worrying number of bacterial infections are increasingly resistant to the drugs available to treat them”, has worried recently …
–
