Antibiotic resistance monitoring: the Spanish programme

Antimicrobial resistance is a problem in modern public health and antimicro bial use and especially misuse, the most important selecting force for bact erial antibiotic resistance. As this resistance must be monitored we have d esigned the Spanish network 'Red de Vigilancia de Resistencias Antibioticas en Bacterias de Origen Veterinario:. This network covers the three critica l points of veterinary responsibility, bacteria from sick animals, bacteria from healthy animals and bacteria from food animals. Key bacteria, antimic robials and animal species have been defined for each of these groups along with laboratory methods for testing antimicrobial susceptibility and for d ata analysis and reporting. Surveillance of sick animals was first implemen ted using Escherichia coli as the sentinel bacterium. Surveillance of E. co li and Enterococcus faecium from healthy pigs was implemented in 1998. In J uly 1999, data collection on Salmonella spp, was initiated in poultry slaug hterhouses. Additionally, the prevalence of vancomycin resistant E. faecium was also monitored. This network has specific topics of interest related t o methods of determining resistance, analysis and reporting of data, method s of use for veterinary practitioners and collaboration with public health authorities. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. and International Society of Ch emotherapy. All rights reserved.