About AURA:

The Commission's Antimicrobial Use and Resistance in Australia (AURA) Project contributes to the AURA surveillance program, which is coordinated by the Department of Health and Aged Care. AURA data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) inform strategies for infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship.

About APAS:

Australian Passive AMR Surveillance (APAS) is coordinated by the Commission in collaboration with Queensland Health. APAS collects, analyses and reports on AMR data from routine susceptibility testing results from participating public and private pathology services across Australia. APAS contains de-identified patient-level AMR data collected from hospitals, aged care, and community settings across Australia.

About the data - Updated on 10 February 2025:

• Data represent clinical infections
• Data from isolates detected in infection control and environmental sampling were excluded
• Data were only included where there were at least 30 isolates for each analysis
• Analyses were conducted only when the proportion of isolates that were tested against a single antimicrobial was at least 75%
• Only the first isolate for the first specimen of each specimen type per year was included in the dataset for analyses
• APAS data report on antimicrobials tested by using either the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) or the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) or the Calibrated Dichotomous Sensitivity (CDS) methods that were used by the pathology service
• APAS provides categorical data (susceptible, intermediate [susceptible increased exposure], resistant) based on interpretive criteria
• For the dashboards, the percentage of resistant isolates is as determined by the participating pathology service
• Data were mapped to Australian Statistical Area Levels 3 and/or 4 (SA3 and SA4) based on postcode of residence (where known), depending on the number of isolates available. SA4s are the largest sub-state regions; they are geographic areas built from whole SA3s
• Data are not available from Northern Territory and data are not available from the Australian Capital Territory from November 2022, except where a resident received pathology services in another jurisdiction
• Data from Mater Pathology Queensland are not available from December 2024.

For more information about APAS and methodology and consideration for analyses, see Appendices 1 and 2 of Australian Passive AMR Surveillance: An update of resistance trends in multidrug-resistant organisms – 2006 to 2023.