Mapping antibiotic use and resistance in the Netherlands: SWAB and NethMap

The worldwide emergence of antimicrobial resistance has elicited responses from national and international organisations, including the World Health Organisation and the European Union. In the Netherlands, the non-profit foundation SWAB was jointly started by several professional medical societies to coordinate the Dutch efforts in preventing and reversing the trend of emerging resistance. SWAB publishes guidelines on the prudent use of antibiotics in this and other journals. The results of SWAB's surveillance systems for antibiotic consumption and resistance were recently summarised in its NethMap 2003 document. Attention should now be focused on elucidating the major determinants of antibiotic use and resistance emergence, and designing effective intervention strategies to reverse the trend of resistance emergence.