EPI-Net Annual Meeting: An Inter-Sectoral Exchange of New Ideas

On September 12th-13th the 2nd International EPI-Net meeting took place in Verona, Italy.

With the aim of gathering COMBACTE members, project partners and external experts and stakeholders, the two-day meeting led by Evelina Tacconelli (UNIVR, Academic Lead EPI-Net), Jesus Rodriguez Bano (SAS, Management Board Member COMBACTE-CARE), Frank Sifakis (AstraZeneca/MedImmune; EFPIA Lead ASPIRE-ICU) and Cuong Vuong (AiCuris, EFPIA Lead RESCUING) brought together 40 attendees from 11 countries.

The participants representing a diversity of sectors, including epidemiology, infection control and human and veterinary antibiotic usage, shared past, present and future perspectives as well as new ideas for improvement of reporting of surveillance data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and healthcare-associated infection (HAI).

The first day started with a global overview of current and future surveillance efforts given by CDDEP, WHO and Wellcome Trust representatives.

The following session focused on updates of ongoing EPI-Net projects and future steps, during which the EPI-Net website was officially launched. The open access platform reports surveillance data from various national and international European surveillance systems on AMR/HAIs, emerging resistance on new antibiotics, and outbreaks due to antibiotic resistant bacteria linking microbiological and epidemiological data. The website provides greater insights into distribution of serious bacterial infections in the human and animal populations due to 17 antibiotic resistant microorganisms across Europe.

The afternoon featured the launch of the COACH Project (antimiCrObial resistance surveillAnCe to drive stewardsHip), which aims to provide a practical tool to connect epidemiological and surveillance data to the implementation of stewardship policies and/or interventions in the hospital settings decreasing the rate of inappropriate antibiotic therapy.

With the goal of establishing expert consensus for realization of a white paper, the attendees were divided into 4 working groups, where different aspects of antimicrobial resistance surveillance related to the antimicrobial stewardship were examined and later discussed in a plenary session.

We hope that this inter-sectoral network will more and more contribute and sustain a harmonized approach to collection, analysis and sharing of data on AMR/HAI at European and global level.