Instituto Nacional de Salud (INS) is the technical-scientific authority in Colombia that oversees the surveillance of health and safety, is coordinator of laboratory networks and research in public health in the country. This time with international support will continue to strengthen the capacities both within the institution and in the territories of the surveillance of the etiological agents that cause antimicrobial resistance and contribute to the improvement of the monitoring and prevention of infections associated with health care, presenting a summary proposal of the following components:
Component 1: Improve the prevent the transmission of infections by reviewing the systems of surveillance in different health institutions, device-associated (IDA) and infections in surgical sites (SSI). Expand the national surveillance network to activate the early alert of intrahospital infections and add to the surveillance system renal and oncologic units; Through the merge of information systems, training clinical staff to increase the capacity in the detection of health care-associated infections (HAI). In the long term, it will generate an automated alert for HAI for usual and unusual microorganisms. Will be applied in territorial health entities to improve technical and response capacities to public health.
Component 2: Laboratory-based surveillance, the National Laboratory Network, and the reference Laboratory playing a central role in the AMR dissemination of surveillance data to local, national, and international levels. Strengthening surveillance programs in the country allows identifying AMR mechanisms, the diversity of genetic lineages, and vehicles of the expansion of resistance phenotypes. The aim of this component is to enhance the capacity to detect and monitor emerging antimicrobial resistance in healthcare settings, enteric pathogens, fungal pathogens, invasive bacterial and respiratory pathogens, and N. gonorrhoeae in Colombia. The major outcomes will be: 1) Design a website surveillance for emerging AMR,2) Improved technical capacity in clinical and reference laboratory staff increase ability to detect emerging AMR 3) Expand the national laboratory network to perform the laboratory-based AMR surveillance 4) Rapid identification of emerging AMR threats, 5) Strengthen technical capacity for performing whole-genome sequencing and analysis of multi-resistant isolates recovered from laboratory-based surveillance and of outbreaks with emerging AMR in the National Reference Laboratory in Colombia and, 6) Establish integrated surveillance on the collection of epidemiological data from the patient and WGS analysis.
Component 3: Rapid response to outbreaks of infectious diseases or other public health emergencies in health institutions, will be a strategy to improve prevention and control of infections to prevent transmission in facilities. To address this goal a new module in virtual platform in Instituto Nacional de Salud will be developed for the detection, generation of alerts, activation of surveillance response, prevention, control of infections in outbreaks of HAI. The implementation of the correspondence between information sources to strengthen detection, expand the national public health surveillance network and identify outbreaks associated with health care according to the expansion of services, installed capacity of health institutions and expansion of services of the national network of laboratories that contribute to the structuring of an action plan for automation in Sivigila 4 of the process of notification, generation of alerts, monitoring, management, closure and information adjustments of outbreaks of infections associated with health care. The project will be applied in the 36 departments around Colombia, therefore, disparities in health will be evaluated since Colombian departments will be encouraged with their health institutions to improve technical and response capacities to threats to public health
