The infection rates of primary pathogenic agents as designated by World Health Organization (WHO) are higher in local communities that in hospitals in Korea.

Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC)_{질병관리본부} said it would share with WHO the results of monitoring it conducted for one year (May 2016-April 2017) after joining the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), an international surveillance system for resistance to antibiotics pursued by the global agency.

GLASS is a monitoring network of antibiotics-resistant bacteria that WHO formed in 2015 to produce antibiotics resistance statistics that can be compared with nations, by collecting, analyzing, and sharing internationally standardized antibiotics resistance data.

The United Nations (U.N.) and WHO is warning against the seriousness of antibiotics resistance as threatening health security. In Korea, too, antibiotics resistance has emerged as a problem not just for general hospitals but smaller clinics.

The minister of health and welfare expressed Korea’s intention to join GLASS to solve antibiotics resistance, at an Asian health minister meeting in Japan, completed its admission through consultation with WHO in July last year, and announced national measures to manage antibiotics resistance for 2016-2020.

KCDC selected general hospitals in six regions as monitoring institutions to produce standard data as requested by GLASS and has conducted its surveillance of laboratories since May last year, by performing antibiotics sensitivity test on eight pathogenic organisms separated from patients and test of the characteristics of resistance genes.

As a result, it collected 10,586 strains (unit of bacteria) from blood, urine, and excrement for 12 months until this past April.

Source : Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The resistance rate of primary pathogenic organism showed 43.9 percent of colon bacillus revealed resistance to ciprofloxacin, while 32.1 percent of colon bacillus and 34.5 percent of Klebsiella pneumonia showed the resistance to cefotaxime respectively.

The infection rates of local communities were higher than those of hospitals except for Acinetobacter and Staphylococcus aureus.

In the case of Staphylococcus aureus, 69.4 percent of infection in hospitals and 37.5 percent of infections in local communities showed the resistance to cefoxitin. Among colon bacillus, 82.2 percent of infections in hospitals and 61.5 percent of infections in local communities showed the resistance to ampicillin.

And 20.5 percent and 55.8 percent of infections in hospitals showed the resistance to the third-generation cephalosporin of ceftazidime and cefotaxime, respectively, while 9 percent and 29.5 percent of infections in local communities showed the resistance to ceftazidime and cefotaxime.

Also, 48.2 percent and 40.5 percent of infections in hospitals showed the resistance to Klebsiella pneumonia cefotaxime and ceftazidime, while 18.6 percent and 13.1 percent of infections in local communities showed the resistance to cefotaxime and ceftazidime. And 80.1 percent infections in hospitals and 33.3 percent infections in local communities showed the resistance to Acinetobacter meropenem and imipenem.

Salmonella virus showed sensitivity to ciprofloxacin of fluoroquinolone series, while all Diplococcus pneumonia viruses showed sensitivity to penicillin.

“The antibiotics resistance rate of the pathogenic organisms in Korea remains at a dangerous level, which means the government has to continue to take national measures to reduce the use of antibiotics, use a reasonable amount of antibiotics and to block antibiotics-resistant viruses,” KCDC said.

“We will grasp correct situations, both here and abroad, by analyzing the status of antibiotics resistance virus with standardized methods by participating in the WHO’s GLASS,” it said. “And the government will make use of official data, based on which it will be able to provide policies and measures that suit the domestic situations as well as present proper direction for research and development.”

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