On 9 December 2022, WHO GLASS released their fifth report in collaboration with 127 participating countries. The new GLASS 2022 edition summarizes AMR data and trends in common bacterial infections reported by 87 countries in 2020. The report revealed high and increasing levels of resistance in life-threatening and common bacteria infections respectively. For example, life-threatening hospital bloodstream infections such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp show high levels (above 50%) of resistance, while resistance is increasing in several bacteria causing common infections such as Neisseria gonorrhoea with over 60% resistance to one of the most used oral antibacterials, ciprofloxacin. In addition, bloodstream infections due to resistant Escherichia coli and Salmonella spp. and resistant gonorrhoea infections increased by at least 15% compared to rates in 2017.
The report brings new features, including analyses of population testing coverage or AMR trends. For the first time, the report presented 2020 data on Antimicrobial consumption (AMC) in humans at the national level. Data reported on AMC showed a global variation in antimicrobials and antibacterial consumption, where antibacterials were the most consumed antimicrobials.
Beta-lactam penicillins were the most consumed, despite the variation in consumption of antibacterial pharmacological subgroups. 65% of reporting countries met the WHO-defined target of at least 60% consumption of Access group antibacterials in the AWaRe classification.
In addition to presenting data collected through the latest data call, this report provides a summary of five years of national AMR surveillance data contributed to GLASS from its initiation. It presents AMR findings in the context of progress of country participation in GLASS and in global AMR surveillance coverage and (sub)national level laboratory quality assurance systems.
This report marks the end of the early implementation phase of GLASS. The next GLASS phase will include systematic, prospective national prevalence surveys to support routine surveillance and allow countries from low-resource settings to achieve nationally representative AMR data trends.
WHO GLASS also released a new interactive dashboard allowing users to explore AMR and AMC global data, country profiles and download the data.
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