6 Global surveillance systems

Global surveillance programmes that monitor antibiotic resistance in specific bacterial pathogens, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Zignol et al., 2016) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Wi et al., 2017) have been in place for many years. However, significant gaps remain in the surveillance of many other important bacterial pathogens that cause infections in humans. Addressing this problem and developing common standards for data collection, analysis and sharing at local, national, regional and global levels led to the establishment of the WHO’s GLASS platform in 2015.

As you may recall, the Global Action Plan on AMR recommends that a One Health approach be applied to AMR surveillance (WHO, 2015). It should be noted that GLASS does not yet (at the time of writing in 2020) constitute a truly global One Health AMR surveillance system as it is in its early implementation phase and continues to undergo development. It should also be noted that although there is currently no global cross-sector (human, animal, agriculture)-integrated surveillance system, the WHO Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AGISAR) has worked in close collaboration with the FAO and the OIE to promote the development of harmonised surveillance across different sectors in order to inform public health, animal health and global food security. The WHO is also working on a protocol called ‘Tricycle’ aimed at supporting countries to take a One Health approach to AMR surveillance in humans, animals and the environment.

As of April 2020, 92 countries were enrolled in GLASS (Figure 9). Enrolment does not necessarily mean that the countries have provided AMR data to GLASS, but it does confirm the country is in the process of developing a national AMR surveillance system. Countries who enrol in GLASS are expected to nominate a national focal point that operates as the national communication hub and represents the AMR surveillance system in that country. The GLASS IT (information technology) platform also operates via the national focal point, and once aggregated AMR data are available, such as isolate-specific antimicrobial susceptibility data, they can be shared with GLASS.

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Figure 9 GLASS country enrolment status as of April 2020 (WHO, 2020).

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A map of the world showing which countries have enrolled in GLASS.

Figure 9 GLASS country enrolment status as of April 2020 (WHO, 2020).