The main aim of the ESAC project is to maintain a continuous, comprehensive database on human antimicrobial consumption (primary plus secondary care) in all European countries. There are four additional sub-projects:
· Ambulatory Care (AC)
o Collecting usage data from ambulatory care (primary care in the UK)
o Where possible, stratifying data by age, gender and indication, and assessing how this information explains differences in antibiotic use in ambulatory care
o Investigating relationships between national resistance data and the recommendations of national evidence-based clinical guidelines
o Developing indicators to assess the quality of antibiotic use in ambulatory care
o Assessment of impact of interventions to alter prescribing in the community
· Hospital Care (HC)
o Developing web-based antibiotic point prevalence (Web-PPS) methodology, and conducting Europe-wide studies
o Collecting hospital usage data, with some information regarding e.g. the size and type of institution to facilitate comparisons
o Developing indicators to assess the quality of antibiotic use in hospitals
· Nursing Homes (NH)
o Using Web-PPS methodology to evaluate antimicrobial prescribing in nursing homes
o Evaluating the factors influencing antimicrobial use at institutional and individual levels e.g. level of care required, relative availability of antibiotics etc
· Socio-economic determinants (EC)
o Investigating socio-economic, demographic and organisational determinants of antimicrobial consumption e.g. relationships between antimicrobial use and local burden of disease, public knowledge about antibiotics, or differences in health care systems (e.g. non-prescription availability of antimicrobials)
