From left -- Dr Preethi Perera -President Elect, Dr Kushlani Jayatilleke –Secretary and Dr Sagarika Samarasinghe – President of the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists, Stuart Chapman-Managing Director, Dr Lucian Jayasuriya - Medical Advisor and Roger Talayaratne - Marketing Manager of GSK.

A national surveillance on microbial resistance to antibiotics, an emerging problem worldwide, has been launched in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists, with funding from GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (GSK).

The four-year project costing Rs 10.3 million, seeks to establish an identification system for widely prevalent bacterial pathogens and their resistance patterns, and to harmonise the different methods in use for antibiotic sensitivity testing (ABST) into the universally-accepted CLSI (Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute) method, according to a GSK press release.

“Epidemiological information on resistance patterns is scarce in our country due to the poor facilities for proper identification of infectious agents to the species level,” explained Dr. Sagarika Samarasinghe, President of the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists (SLCM). “Although clinical information on antibiotic resistance is released, the existing limitations in identification of species, diminishes the epidemiological importance of this information.”

As part of the project, the College of Microbiologists plans to establish a National Data Bank on antibiotic resistance and promote further research on the subject, she disclosed.