Molecular epidemiology of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii strains isolated at the German military field laboratory in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan. CRAb from Afghanistan

The study was performed to provide an overview on the molecular epidemiology of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter (A.) baumannii in Afghanistan isolated by the German military medical service during the Afghanistan conflict. A total of 18 isolates had been collected between 2012 and 2018 at the microbiological laboratory of the field hospital in Camp Marmal near Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, from Afghan patients. The isolates were subjected to phenotypic and genotypic differentiation and antimicrobial susceptibility testing as well as to a core genome multi locus sequence typing (cgMLST) approach based on whole genome next generation sequence (wgNGS) data