In February 1993, the C.C.L.I.N. (Regional Center for Infectious Diseases) working group for the Southwest, focusing on the epidemiology of multidrug-resistant bacteria, proposed establishing a network of volunteer laboratories to monitor trends in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals across the region. This initiative led to the establishment of a surveillance network to monitor the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The same type of survey was repeated in 1994.