The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this Friday that bacterial resistance to antibiotics is among the top 10 threats to global public health, highlighting the “great concern” of blood infections in hospital settings.
“Antimicrobial resistance represents a major global threat of great economic and public health proportions,” underlines the fifth report of the WHO surveillance system published this Friday.
The document emphasizes that modern medicine depends on effective antimicrobial drugs, but high rates of resistant infections in a wide range of microorganisms have been reported in all WHO regions.
“Very high levels in 2020 of antimicrobial resistance in pathogens that cause bloodstream infections, regardless of testing coverage, are of great concern,” the organization added.
In addition, according to the report, the very high levels of resistance to various bacteria that cause infections in the blood imply that “infection prevention and control measures are strengthened in hospital settings globally.”
The WHO also emphasizes that the results of this report demonstrate the continuing need to build robust surveillance systems capable of producing data that can be used to inform and evaluate public health action.
The document underlines that the Covid-19 pandemic may have had an impact on the reporting capacity of various countries and territories, and the WHO recommends strengthening surveillance, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
“The low proportion of countries and territories that perform external quality assurance on all clinical laboratories serving national surveillance systems calls for an urgent global effort to support the development of national bacteriology clinical networks, particularly in low-income countries and mediums, and a global network of microbiology laboratories to support diagnosis in all regions,” the report states.
According to data recently published by the General Directorate of Health (DGS), Portugal registered a reduction in the consumption of antibiotics in outpatient clinics in 2020.
The use of quinolones, one of the antibiotics most associated with the emergence of resistance, fell by 69% between 2014 and 2020, equaling the European average, according to the DGS.
Source: TSF
