ABSTRACT
There is increasing interest in developed countries in the control of hospital-acquired infection. Amongst nosocomial pathogens, multiple resistant Gram-negative bacilli have proved to be a particular problem over the last 30 years. The therapeutic introduction of early antibiotics, mainly to control Gram-positive infections, was followed by the emergence of Gram-negative bacteria in the late 1960s, and an increasing incidence during the 1970s of resistant Enterobacteriaceae involved in nosocomial infections. It was only in 1971 that the Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Moraxella and Allied Bacteria proposed that the genus Acinetobacter should include only the oxidase-negative strains. Strains of Acinetobacter are ubiquitous non-fermentative organisms that are distributed widely in nature.
