Molecular and antibiogram relationships of Acinetobacter isolates from two contrasting hospitals in the United Kingdom and South Africa

The aim of this study was to compare the molecular relationships and antibiograms of nosocomial isolates of Acinetobacter spp. from two acute-care hospitals in Nottingham, UK, and Soweto, South Africa, with different hospital infection control problems and procedures. In contrast to Nottingham, where randomly amplified polymorphic DNA fingerprinting demonstrated that a single multiresistant strain of Acinetobacter baumannii has predominated in the hospital intensive care unit over an Ii-year period, the Soweto isolates formed a heterogeneous group of unrelated molecular clusters of different antibiograms, with numerous different strains of Acinetobacter baumannii, Acinetobacter sp. 3 and Acinetobacter sp. 13TU apparently being endemic throughout the Soweto hospital. The contrasting results illustrate the need to maintain exemplary infection control procedures in hospitals where high standards have been achieved and warn of what might result if such measures are diminished.