Abstract
Healthcare-associated infections are a serious public health concern resulting in morbidity and mortality particularly in developing countries. The lack of information from Africa, the increasing rates of antimicrobial resistance and the emergence of new resistance mechanisms intensifies this concern warranting the need for vigorous standardised surveillance platforms that produce reliable and accurate data which can be used for addressing these concerns. The implementation of national treatment guidelines, policies, antimicrobial stewardship programmes and infection prevention and control practices within healthcare institutions require a platform from which it can draw information and direct its approach. In this review, the importance of standardised surveillance systems, the challenges faced in the application of a surveillance system and the condition (existence and nonexistence) of such systems in African countries is discussed. This review also reports on some South African data.
Highlights
Infections caused by healthcare-associated pathogens are a public health concern that results in morbidity and mortality in developing countries.[1]
The inappropriate use and overuse of antimicrobial agents leads to the selection of antimicrobialresistant organisms and since these agents play a critical role in healthcare, increasing rates of resistance creates a serious threat in healthcare settings.[3]
This study showed that 442 cases of S. aureus bacteraemia were reported and antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed on 54% of the isolates (n = 240)
Summary
Infections caused by healthcare-associated pathogens are a public health concern that results in morbidity and mortality in developing countries.[1]. In 2014, antimicrobial resistance surveillance data on Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from patients with bacteraemia were published[30]; isolates were submitted by sentinel laboratories in five regions of South Africa from mid-2010 to mid-2012 This included 13 academic centres serving the public healthcare sector in the Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Limpopo and Western Cape provinces. Staphylococcus aureus isolates demonstrated higher susceptibility to cloxacillin, from 65% in 2015 to 69% in 2016 (unpublished data)
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