Head: Associate Professor Helena Žemličková, M.D., Ph.D.

• is the NIPH guarantor of  the National Antibiotic Program (endorsed by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic);
• is the umbrella for the Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Working Group established within the NRL for Antibiotics;
• is the coordinator of the project EARS-Net: European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net website in Czech) coordinated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) at the European level;
• carries out national surveillance of S. aureus strains causing invasive infections by molecular typing within the European project EARS-Net/SeqNet;
• screens bacteria for resistance to antimicrobials that are not routinely tested;
• performs typing of strains with high-risk antimicrobial resistance for epidemiological purposes;
• evaluates results of antimicrobial resistance surveillance at the national level and engages in their presentation, among others on websites  (EARS-Net);
• stores strains with significant resistance for further analysis;
• tests, introduces and implements methods for routine testing of susceptibility and for the detection of atypical resistance (Recommended procedures), detects specific resistance genes, and uses molecular methods for the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance;
• provides control strains with defined antimicrobial resistance within the quality control of the detection of atypical resistance https://archiv.szu.cz/cnctc/;
• selects strains for testing antimicrobial susceptibility within the External Quality Assessment Scheme (EQAS) - Bacteriology;
• evaluates and comments on the antimicrobial susceptibility testing results within the EQAS - Bacteriology in the Bulletin of  Epidemiology and Microbiology;
• participates in the development of the guidelines for the use of antimicrobials and diagnosis and treatment of infections, with the J.E. Purkyně Czech Medical Association as the guarantor http://www.cls.cz/dalsi-odborne-projekty;