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Australian Health Review Australian Health Review Society
Journal of the Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Leveraging existing data to improve antimicrobial resistance-related mortality estimates for Australia

Teresa M. Wozniak https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3182-8348 A B * , Anthony Nguyen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6215-6954 A , Norm Good https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6446-7644 A and Geoffrey W. Coombs https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1635-6506 C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A The Australian e-Health Research Centre, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Qld, Australia.

B College of Public Health, Medical & Veterinary Science, James Cook University, Qld, Australia.

C Microbiology Department, Fiona Stanley Hospital, PathWest Laboratory Medicine, Antimicrobial Resistance and Infectious Disease (AMRID) Research Laboratory, School of Medical, Molecular and Forensic Sciences, Murdoch University, WA, Australia.

* Correspondence to: teresa.wozniak@csiro.au

Australian Health Review 48(4) 455-458 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH24102
Submitted: 10 April 2024  Accepted: 25 June 2024  Published: 15 July 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global pandemic, however, estimating its burden is a complex process. As a result, many countries rely on global estimates to infer burden within their own setting. With a growing number of recent publications quantifying AMR burden in Australia, and an expansion of surveillance programs, enumerating AMR mortality for Australia is feasible. We aimed to leverage existing published data to assess methodological factors contributing to the considerable variation in AMR-related mortality and provide two reliable estimates of AMR mortality in Australia. This is a necessary step towards generating meaningful measures of AMR burden in Australia.

Keywords: all-cause mortality, antimicrobial resistance, associated mortality, attributable mortality, Australia, burden of disease, epidemiology, mortality.

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