A CHILDREN’S drug resistance monitoring center will be set up at Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, which will monitor drug resistance data for 18 major pediatric hospitals in south and Central China, according to sznews.com.

Apart from the monitoring center in Shenzhen, another two monitoring centers will be set up at the Beijing Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai. The three centers will share information via a real-time communication system and work together to study the resistance of certain bacterial isolates.

The report said drug resistance data from 18 major pediatric hospitals in Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing and other cities in South and Central China will be monitored and analyzed by the Shenzhen center.

“We shouldn’t overuse or demonize antibiotics. We have to use it when it is needed and we should use it wisely and rationally,” said Zheng Yuejie, chief physician of the respiratory department at Shenzhen Children’s Hospital.

He said Beijing and Shanghai have set up monitoring networks for the use of antimicrobials in adults, but there isn’t any network for monitoring the use of antimicrobials in children.

“The children’s drug resistance monitoring centers will standardize the use of antimicrobials in children and give immediate feedback to the hospitals when problems are detected, which will help the hospitals use antimicrobials more rationally,” he said.

According to Zheng, monitoring the use of antimicrobials in children can also help the authorities formulate national guidelines to regulate the use of antimicrobials in children. “Now we usually refer to foreign cases when it comes to the use of antimicrobials in children because we don’t have our own standards or references,” he said.

The Action Plan for the Rational Use of Antibiotics in Chinese Children was jointly released by eight Chinese medical organizations last month in Shenzhen. The action plan is aimed at promoting the rational use of antibiotics in children and curbing the development of drug-resistant bacteria in China in the coming five to 10 years, according to the report. (Zhang Yang)