A COMPREHENSIVE new report commissioned by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care has identified specific strategic opportunities to combat antimicrobial resistance apparent from new data.
The report, Antimicrobial Use and Resistance in Australia 2017 (AURA17): Second Australian report on antimicrobial use and resistance in human health, has highlighted a number of specific types of bacteria as major emerging healthcare problems, with one type in particular causing resistance to last-resort antibiotics in just over half of hospital samples.
"Despite some recent gains in efforts to encourage more careful use of antibiotics, the new report finds as much as 56% of samples of enterococci can be resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin -- a level higher than in any European country," the Commission said.
In addition, the report found that a strain of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has become the most common type of MRSA infection in the community, and is now a more common cause of bloodstream infections than hospital-associated strains.
Action recommended from the data include monitoring and reducing antibiotic prescriptions both in community pharmacy and hospitals (including 'surgical prophylaxis') and monitoring of the spread of resistant strains of neisseria gonorrhoeae.
In terms of vancomycin resistance, the report also urges "strict adherence to infection control guidelines".
CLICK HERE to access AURA17.
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