REPORTS ON SURVEILLANCE OF ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE IN INDIVIDUAL COUNTRIES

In preparation for the meeting of the World Health Organization Workin g Group on Monitoring and Management of Bacterial Resistance to Antimi crobial Agents, representatives of 10 countries were asked to provide brief reports on the status of surveillance in their countries. Some g ave extensive information on the methods used to test susceptibility o f nosocomial pathogens to a variety of antibiotics; some described in detail the network of reference laboratories available to hospitals an d individual clinicians for monitoring, identifying, and testing infec tious agents; others chose to describe how their countries deal with t he resistance of the most frequently isolated pathogen to a commonly u sed drug. The following summary of these reports shows the broad range of problems encountered and solutions undertaken by these 10 countrie s in dealing with the increasingly alarming problem of bacterial resis tance to antimicrobial agents.