Central Asian and European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance: external quality assessment results 2020

Overview

The main objectives of the Central Asian and European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (‎CAESAR)‎ external quality assessment (‎EQA)‎ are to assess:

• the accuracy of the antimicrobial susceptibility testing results reported by the participating laboratories;
• laboratory performance for identification accuracy of survey strains;
• comparability between laboratories and countries/areas in terms of identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing accuracy; and
• to generate evidence for monitoring laboratory performance and guiding corrective actions to improve laboratory capacity.

Participation in the CAESAR EQA serves as a capacity-building exercise for supporting the formation of national/area surveillance networks, and as an educational activity in which laboratories receive carefully selected challenge strains that may include recently emerged resistance mechanisms.

This report describes the results from the CAESAR EQA exercise conducted in 2020 and provides a summary of the eight exercises performed between 2013 and 2020. Results were returned from 17 countries/areas by 277 of 301 (‎92%)‎ participating laboratories. In general, performance was very good and was consistent with that seen in previous EQA surveys among laboratories in the WHO European Region, but some major problems were encountered.