Antimicrobial resistance in Europe: ECDC releases new report

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), together with the WHO Regional Office for Europe, has recently published a report to present antimicrobial resistance (AMR) data from invasive isolates reported to the Central Asian and European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (CAESAR) network and the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) in 2021 (data referring to 2020).    

As recently demonstrated by an international team of researchers, AMR is a major public health concern worldwide. The European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) records each year more than 670 000 infections due to bacteria resistant to antibiotics and approximately 33 000 people die as a direct consequence.    

The report by ECDC is the first in a series and it shows that AMR is widespread in the WHO European Region, although the AMR situation varied widely depending on the bacterial species, antimicrobial group, and geographical region.  

This report focuses on AMR in eight common bacterial pathogens of significant public health importance in Europe. A gradient north-to-south and west-to-east was observed, with the southern and eastern parts of Europe showing higher AMR percentages.  

Despite significant progress in the last decade, with the Global Action Plan on AMR (GAP-AMR) in 2015, the European One Health Action Plan in 2017, and the subsequent commitment by Member States to develop national action plans, several countries/areas are just starting to implement effective interventions to tackle AMR.    

 

Source:  

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/ECDC-WHO-AMR-report.pdf