%0 Journal Article
%T A new journal and new global perspective on infection control and public health
%A Andreas Voss
%A Jan Kluytmans
%A Didier Pittet
%J Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2047-2994-1-4
%X According to WHO, hundreds of millions of patients develop HAI every year worldwide and as many as 1.4 million occur each day in hospitals alone [1]. The burden of disease is obviously much higher in low- and middle-income countries [2], but it is a challenge in itself to provide reliable global estimates and data are scarce from regions of the world where resources are the most limited [3]. Nevertheless, it is clear that a great number of global citizens suffer from preventable HAI. HAI are associated also with huge costs that are no longer affordable for most healthcare systems, including those in resource-rich countries.AMR and the emergence of new pathogens and/or re-emergence of old ones are influenced by a large variety of factors with many far beyond the boundaries of human medicine and local or even national practices. Pathogens that were initially strictly hospital-acquired, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), became community pathogens (CA-MRSA) and even zoonotic pathogens with the emergence of livestock-associated (LA)-MRSA, thereby totally changing the epidemiology of MRSA. CA- and LA-MRSA even pose a serious challenge to the long admired "search and destroy" strategy. Many see the local or national prevalence of MRSA as a surrogate marker for the quality of infection control, and the increasing efforts of nations to address the challenge of ever-increasing MRSA rates seem to produce the right effect [4,5]. While certainly continuing to be a major challenge, the tide seems to be changing from Gram-positive to Gram-negative threats.Multidrug-resistant Gram-negatives expressing extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) or carbapenemases are already highly prevalent both in the community and the environment. Recent studies described that most pieces of retail meat contained ESBL [6]. In addition, New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) was isolated from drinking water [7]. This creates an unprecedented, large transmission route an
%U http://www.aricjournal.com/content/1/1/4