Madrid, November 20 (EFE) – Infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria are a “serious health problem”, with more than 150,000 cases every year in Spain and 23,303 deaths within 30 days of diagnosis.
This is reflected in a study conducted by the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (Seimc) and involving 130 Spanish hospitals on the impact of multidrug-resistant bacteria, which confirmed that patients infected with these bacteria die more often than traffic accidents 20 times higher.
In 2022, 1,145 people died in traffic accidents in Spain.
The study was presented this Monday in the framework of the European Day for the Cautious Use of Antibiotics by José Miguel Cisneros, Head of Infectious Diseases at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville, who underlined these The results are very similar. This makes “the conclusions more consistent” compared to the results obtained in the two previous versions (2018 and 2019).
The 130 hospitals participating in the project are located in all autonomous regions and account for 40% of available hospital beds in Spain.
260 researchers participated in the study, two from each center, who collected data from patients following strict microbiological and clinical standards.
From a clinical perspective, urinary tract infections are the most common, while pneumonia causes the highest mortality.
According to the World Health Organization, infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria are one of the top ten threats to global public health and are expected to become a leading cause of death by 2050.
Despite this data, the extent of the health impact of these infections has not yet been quantified, so Seimc’s main goal is to understand the Spanish data.
On the day the study was published, members of the Scientific Committee of Seimc Rafael Cantón called on trained professionals in the field and institutions to support this effort.
Dr. José Ramón Paño-Pardo, representing the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), highlighted that the Program for the Optimization of Antibiotic Use (PROA) is one of the necessary solutions to the complex problem of resistance to these drugs.
According to the expert, “one of the advantages offered by these programs is their horizontality, since it is a problem that does not understand hospital boundaries” Most European countries have antimicrobial resistance programs, although their implementation varies greatly .
Representatives from the Spanish Medicines Agency (AEMPS) and the Patient Organization Platform (POP) also participated in the event. All participants agreed that receiving specialized and up-to-date training in infectious diseases is essential, especially in a global environment where pathogens and new diseases are rapidly evolving.
Furthermore, they believe that in this context, the recognition of the infectious diseases profession in Spain, which is the only country in the EU that has not yet recognized it, becomes increasingly urgent. EFE
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