Two decades of resistance surveillance by the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy: design, development, delivery, deficiencies and future directions

The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy Antimicrobial Surveillance Project was established in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland in response to dissatisfaction with existing antimicrobial surveillance which, in the 1990s, was fragmented and poorly informative for clinical and public heath purposes. The model developed into an integrated Project that was novel in its management and financing, being a true collaboration between a medical charity, pharmaceutical companies and the laboratories contracted to perform the testing. Separate ‘Programmes’ within an overall ‘Project’ collected and tested community- and hospital-acquired respiratory and bloodstream infection isolates. Cooperation with public sector bodies allowed data collection from the Project to be compared to routinely collected data from National Health Service laboratories. Between 1999 and 2019 the Project delivered test results on almost 100 000 isolates, from 17 bacterial genera to 44 antimicrobial agents. The results were made available annually on a specially constructed web site. In this supplement, we summarize the data collected in a series of papers relevant to the two programmes, discussing the Project’s strengths and deficiencies. Support for the Project declined in the period after 2010, and collection ceased after 20 years, its demise related to changing priorities within the partner organizations. However, the bacterial collection remains and is to be maintained to assist in future work in combating antimicrobial resistance.