"Antimicrobials have been a driver of unprecedented medical and societal advances, but their overuse has resulted in antibiotic resistant bacteria, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting new surveillance data on Monday which reveals widespread resistance to some of the world’s most common infections, including E. coli and pneumonia," a press release summarizing the report said.
"Resistance to penicillin, which has been used for decades to treat pneumonia, ranged from zero to 51 percent among reporting countries," it added. "And between 8 to 65 percent of E. coli associated with urinary tract infections presented resistance to the antibiotic commonly used to treat it, ciprofloxacin."
The report marked a vital step in monitoring antibiotic resistance, which has been linked to overuse of bacteria-killing medications, the release said.
WHO is supporting countries in setting up national antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems to produce reliable, meaningful data, with GLASS helping to standardize data collection for a more complete picture of patterns and trends, according to the release.