Abstract

As antimicrobial resistance has been recognized as a big threat to public health, various surveillance systemsof antimicrobial resistance have been established at national and regional levels worldwide, although there is no global frameworkfor collaborative surveillance of antimicrobial resistance yet. Especially, antimicrobial resistance has been a serious public health threat in the Asian region, and it has become a global problembecause antimicrobial resistance can spread between countries or continents. Recent emergence and international spread of Escherichia coli that produce New Delhi Metallo-betalactamase-1 (NDM-1), from India to many countries worldwide, is one of the best examples of transmission of antimicrobial resistant pathogens, suggesting the importance of well-established surveillance system of antimicrobial resistance at international levels. In the Asian region, which comprises countries in different stages of economic development, the Asian Network of Surveillance of Resistant Pathogens (ANSORP) has been playing a key role in establishing an international surveillance network of antimicrobial resistance for the past 17 years. The ANSORP, which was organized in 1996, is an investigator-initiated, hospital-based, not-forprofit, non-governmental network for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in major pathogens in the Asian region. The ANSORP has been operated by the Asia Pacific Foundation for Infectious Diseases (APFID), founded in 1999 to improve the global health through Asian initiatives by strengthening and coordinating national and international research-related activities on infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. The ANSORP has been expanded to the largest surveillance network in the Asian region, which includes over 120 hospitals in 14 countries (Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, and Saudi Arabia). The experts in the infectious diseases, pediatric infectious diseases, and clinical microbiology have collaborated and established a Local ANSORP Network in each country, collaborating with a ANSORP headquarter and a central reference laboratory in Seoul, Korea. The ANSORP has been conducting multinational surveillance studies for antimicrobial resistance of major human pathogens such as Streptococcus pneumoniae , Staphylococcus aureus , Enterococcus and Gram-negative bacilli, and infectious diseases including communityacquired pneumonia, hospital-acquired pneumonia, and pneumococcal diseases. The ANSORP has been trying to strengthen a surveillance network to get more reliable surveillance data and represent the current status of antimicrobial resistance in each country and the Asian region. In addition, the ANSORP has been collaborating with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to build future strategies to control and prevent antimicrobial resistance in the Asia Pacific region.

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