First surveillance data from WHO shows high levels of bacterial resistance globally

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released its first set of surveillance data on antibiotic resistance, revealing high levels of resistance to several serious bacterial infections globally.

Published in the report, ‘Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System (GLASS)’, the data demonstrates widespread bacterial resistance irrespective of a country’s income (so both low and high-income countries are affected) with a suspected 500,000 people suffering from bacterial infections across 22 countries.

As revealed by WHO, the most commonly reported resistant bacteria were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae, followed by Salmonella spp. However, data on resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis (TB), were not included as this has been tracked since 1994 and WHO provides annual updates in the Global tuberculosis report.

There were vast discrepancies country-to-country regarding the proportion of patients with suspected bloodstream infections that had bacteria resistance to at least one commonly used antibiotic. Penicillin resistance also varied in a range from zero to 51% in the countries that participated in the report. For urinary tract infections associated with E.Coli, between eight and 65% of cases were resistant to ciprofloxacin — commonly prescribed for this condition.

“The report confirms the serious situation of antibiotic resistance worldwide,” said Dr Marc Sprenger, director of WHO’s Antimicrobial Resistance Secretariat. “Some of the world’s most common — and potentially most dangerous — infections are proving drug-resistant. And most worrying of all, pathogens don’t respect national borders. That’s why WHO is encouraging all countries to set up good surveillance systems for detecting drug resistance that can provide data to this global system.”

Currently, the WHO’s surveillance system includes 52 countries in total, 25 of which are high-income, 20 middle-income and seven low-income countries. This first set of data includes information from 40 countries that provided information about their national surveillance systems and 22 that also provided information on antibiotic resistance.

“The report is a vital first step towards improving our understanding of the extent of antimicrobial resistance. Surveillance is in its infancy, but it is vital to develop it if we are to anticipate and tackle one of the biggest threats to global public health,” explained Dr Carmem Pessoa-Silva, who coordinates the new surveillance system at WHO.