Cambodia, which has experienced an alarming rate of resistance to antibiotics due to overuse, hopes to join other countries in sharing antimicrobial resistance data through a global system beginning next year, officials said on the sidelines of a meeting in Phnom Penh yesterday.

In anticipation of that participation, the Ministry of Health this year launched a pilot programme on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance in eight hospitals across the country, said Nov Vandarith, AMR coordinator for the National Institute of Public Health.

“We will expand when we have available resources in the near future,” he said.

Data collected from April to October under the pilot show high rates of antimicrobial resistance in isolates of E.coli, klebsiella pneumoniae and salmonella from the reporting hospitals, of which four are in the capital. It is difficult to draw conclusions from the data, however, as this is the first year it has been tracked.

Sometime next year, the country will begin to upload its data into the WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System, Vandarith said.