Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing threat to human health. Although the prevalence of resistant bacteria in Sweden is low in comparison to many other countries, international trends are alarming and resistance genes do not respect any borders. Recently, the first yearly report on surveillance and control systems for both antibiotic use and resistance was published and made available on the Internet (1). The report is a joint collaboration between the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI, <a href="http://www.smittskyddsinstitutet.se"> http://www.smittskyddsinstitutet.se</a>) and the Swedish Strategic Programme for the Rational Use of Antimicrobial Agents (STRAMA, <a href="http://www.strama.org"> http://www.strama.org</a>). This first yearly report covers data from 2001 and from previous years. Most resistance data have been routinely collected from the local laboratories by the SMI and the Swedish Reference Group for Antibiotics and its subcommittee on methodology (SRGA-M, <a href="http://www.srga.org/"> http://www.srga.org/</a>), but data on specific organisms for the SWEDRES Report were also sent from individual contributing laboratories.