Objectives: To establish a comprehensive, coordinated surveillance system for antimicrobial use and resistance (AURA) in Australia in collaboration with existing surveillance programs. The results of surveillance will enable high-quality information and data for practice improvement, program and policy development, and to support research priorities.
Methods: To develop the AURA Surveillance System, the Commission worked collaboratively with established programs, experts and key stakeholders to bring together their knowledge and expertise to improve on the capture and quality of existing high-quality data collections. A number of gaps where also identified, including a lack of coordination between existing programs to allow analyses and reporting, as well as the need to develop some new programs.
Existing programs integrated under AURA include: the National Antimicrobial Utilisation Surveillance Program (NAUSP), the National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) and the pilot aged care NAPS (acNAPS); the Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, and the expansion of Queensland Health’s OrgTRx System to provide a national passive AMR surveillance system.
Through AURA, these partners are being supported to enhance each program’s capacity and increase participation to improve national coverage. A new program developed is the national alert system for Critical Antimicrobial Resistances (CARAlert) which will provide timely advice on critical antimicrobial resistances to all jurisdictions.
Results: The Commission worked with existing programs to enhance and expand them; and to increase participation, coverage and representativeness in their scope. For the first time, data from these and other programs have been brought together for AURA 2016: First Australian report on antimicrobial use and resistance in human health.
Conclusions: Comprehensive, coordinated and effective surveillance of AMR and AU is a national priority. The Commission has identified the core components of a national surveillance system for antimicrobial use and resistance. It is working to enhance existing programs; and to provide the necessary surveillance, analysis and reporting to inform safety and quality in health care programs, policy development, and to support the National AMR Strategy.