Acinetobacter baumannii is a problematic pathogen of global concern. It causes multiple types of infection, especially among immunocompromised individuals in intensive care units. One of the most serious concerns related to this pathogen is its ability to become resistant to almost all the available antibiotics used in clinical practice. Moreover, it has a great tendency to spread this resistance at a very high rate, crossing borders and affecting healthcare settings across multiple economic levels. In this review, we trace back the reported incidences in the PubMed and the Web of Science databases of A. baumannii infections in both the United Kingdom and Egypt as two representative examples for countries of two different economic levels: high and low-middle income countries. Additionally, we compare the efforts made by researchers from both countries to find solutions to the lack of available treatments by looking into natural products reservoirs. A total of 113 studies reporting infection incidence were included, with most of them being conducted in Egypt, especially the recent ones. On the one hand, this pathogen was detected in the UK many years before it was reported in Egypt; on the other hand, the contribution of Egyptian researchers to identifying a solution using natural products is more notable than that of researchers in the UK. Tracing the prevalence of A. baumannii infections over the years showed that the infections are on the rise, especially in Egypt vs. the UK. Further concerns are linked to the spread of antibiotic resistance among the isolates collected from Egypt reaching very alarming levels. Studies conducted in the UK showed earlier inclusion of high-throughput technologies in the tracking and detection of A. baumannii and its resistance than those conducted in Egypt. Possible explanations for these variations are analyzed and discussed.
Keywords: A. baumannii; Egypt; United Kingdom; carbapenem resistance; natural products.