Antimicrobial Resistance & Stewardship

“A key to helping patients live even that long—a vast improvement from an average lifespan of 10 years just decades ago—is judicious use of antibiotics,” explains Andrea Hahn, M.D., a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children’s National Health System in Washington D.C.

Viruses frequently cause lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) in adults. Physicians often treat those infections with antibiotics because there is not enough immediately-available information to gauge whether a patient may have a viral or a bacterial infection. Unnecessary exposure to antibiotics can be harmful to patients, and it also contributes to the development of antimicrobial resistance.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact global populations at a large scale. As of April 2023, there have been over 700 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and nearly 7 million deaths reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Antibiotics have been used to save countless lives for decades. What happens when these drugs we depend on are no longer effective? Imagine a scenario where routine surgeries and minor infections can frequently become life-threatening, and the cost of treatment increases substantially.

The Global Point Prevalence Survey (Global-PPS) is a free, online tool, developed by the University of Antwerp in Belgium, to measure and monitor antimicrobial prescribing and resistance in hospitals worldwide. Since its creation and launched in 2015, more than 90 countries have taken part in the initiative, involving 1,300 hospitals and 500,000 patients.