JHI have just published an interesting point prevalence HCAI and AMR study from Ukraine. Headlines are that rates of both HCAI and AMR are higher than you’d hope to see, especially with rates of resistant to carbapenems in Gram-negative bacteria and meticillin in S. aureus.

17 Ukrainian hospitals participated in the survey between 2019 and 2021. Overall, 16% of around 38,000 patients were found to have an HCAI, with pneumonia, UTI, SSI, and BSI the found most common HCAI. Overall, 75% of patients were on antibiotics (yep, 75%!). Rates of resistant to key antibiotics were high and increasing, with >50% of K. pneumoniae and 67% of P. aeruginosa resistant to carbapenems, and >40% of S. aureus resistant to meticillin. Multidrug resistance was also a real issue, with 25% of all bacteria collected for molecular analysis meeting the criteria as multidrug-resistant organisms.

Data from Europe suggests that the HCAI rate is around 6%. And the most recent HCAI PPS in England found that 7% of patients had an HCAI and around 1/3 were on antibiotics. These comparisons suggest that the HCAI and AMR picture may be considerably worse in Ukraine than in other parts of Europe. However, we can’t rule out that methodological differences in the PPS itself may have contributed to these apparent differences.

It’s great to see some PPS data from this part of the world, but concerning to see the high levels of HCAI and AMR from the region. Worth noting that this was before the war that is ongoing in Ukraine, and that will have created a strained and unstable healthcare system – resulting in even more reliance on antibiotics.