March 09, 2011
Last week, Extending the Cure’s ResistanceMap released new videos visualizing resistance trends in inpatient settings. The maps highlighted a number of concerning patterns, including a rise in resistance to commonly prescribed fluoroquinolone antibiotics, and an eight-fold increase in inpatient Acinetobacter baumannii resistance to imipenem in most cases considered a last resort antibiotic.
The Health Care Blog ran a feature piece co-authored by Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of CDDEP, and John Lumpkin, senior vice president and director of the Health Care Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Visualizing the Threat Posed by Antibiotic Resistance looked at some of the motivations behind the development of ResistanceMap, including providing an accessible way for policymakers and researchers to quickly identify regions in urgent need of better infection control, enhanced surveillance, more vigilant antibiotic stewardship, and comprehensive methods to curtail the spread of resistant microbes.
Media coverage highlights of the ResistanceMap release include:
Spoonful of Medicine (a Nature blog): Charting the course of Antibiotic Resistance
Examiner.com: ResistanceMap: visualizing trends in antibiotic resistance
WCTV: New Online Tool Tracks Antibiotic Resistance
If you haven’t seen the new ResistanceMap videos, take a look at http://www.cddep.org/resistancemap
