Toward multinational antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems in Europe

While there is a growing concern about increasing antimicrobial resistance and international spread of resistant microorganisms, we are still lacking timely multinational, good-quality susceptibility data to guide our decisions on controlling such resistance. This review describes and compares current sources of multicentric antimicrobial susceptibility data, identifies problems responsible for the postponing of the implementation of epidemiological antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems and finally presents requirements for such systems. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. and International Society of Chemotherapy. All rights reserved.