Many countries have created action plans to tackle antimicrobial resistance, but relatively few of those plans are fully activated and adequately funded, a new WHO publication explains. Above, a pediatrician screens a young patient for a respiratory tract infection in Armenia. ©WHO/Nazik Armenakyan
Out shopping one day, Vanessa Carter felt moisture on her cheek and looked in her rearview mirror. She saw pus seeping from an area of her face where she had undergone reconstructive surgery after a road accident.
“I kind of freaked out. I hadn’t seen this before,” said Ms Carter, of South Africa. “They said to me, ‘Come in. This is an emergency. It must be an infection of the prosthetic."
Over the following year Ms Carter’s infection would retreat and then rebound, eating away at her flesh as she consulted experts, received conflicting medical advice and ineffective treatments, and frantically searched online for answers.
It took almost a year for her to get an accurate diagnosis: She had MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterial infection. She learned that many kinds of antibiotics would not work against MRSA. The realization helped lead her medical team to treatments that could work.
“If I’d known earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have lost huge portions of my face,” said Ms Carter, the chair of WHO’s Taskforce of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Survivors. “I am not the only patient with a story like this. We know there are many, many more.”
Ms Carter told her story at the October launch of WHO’s new publication, “People-centred approach to addressing antimicrobial resistance in human health: WHO core package of interventions to support national action plans.”
The publication, prepared with financial support from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, presents a package of interventions countries should prioritize in their national action plans to counter AMR, a growing public health threat that kills at least 1.3 million people a year and contributes to the deaths of 4.9 million more people across the life course from neonates to the elderly. It puts all modern medicine at risk.
Among the report’s recommendations is that countries promote the stories of people who, like Ms Carter, have fought drug-resistant infections, because their experiences often reveal gaps in health systems that prevent timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Patients’ stories can also point to factors that enable microbes to develop resistance to drugs in the first place: poor sanitation, inadequate hand washing, unaffordable treatments, unavailable tests, lack of awareness and training, lack of access to essential health services, and weak government regulation that enables substandard and falsified antibiotics to circulate.
The people-centred approach aims to “shift the narrative of antimicrobial resistance away from the more traditional bugs-and-drugs discourse that we have used, towards a people-centred, humanized narrative,” said Dr Sarah Paulin-Deschenaux, technical officer in WHO’s Antimicrobial Resistance Division and one of the publication’s authors. “We hope this will enhance awareness and understanding of AMR among policymakers, because in all fairness, we still have a long way to go to really get full political and financial commitment to address this growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance.”
The people-centred approach was developed by a multidisciplinary working group and complemented with feedback from a global online consultation and WHO’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Antimicrobial Resistance.
WHO expresses its sincere thanks to all its vital donors and partners listed below, who have already stepped forward to support AMR work at global, regional and country levels.
To mark World AMR Awareness Week, which begins today, we have selected a few stories that highlight WHO-supported work with countries and partners around the world.
Epidemiologist Dr B. Gnoevoi checks for expired or improperly stored medicines at the Mechnikov Hospital, Ukraine. He underwent WHO training on antimicrobial resistance in 2022. ©WHO/Christopher Black
Sustaining Action Against Antimicrobial Resistance: A Case Series of Country Experiences
Nigeria bolsters laboratory capacity for antimicrobial resistance towards Universal Health Coverage
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WHO appreciates all donors and partners who are contributing to the fight against AMR, with special acknowledgement to those who are making AMR a priority in WHO's work - amongst these, the European Union, France, Germany, Japan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and its Fleming Fund, the UN Multi-Partner Trust Fund on Antimicrobial Resistance and the United States of America and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
WHO thanks all governments and organizations who are contributing to the Organization's work, with special appreciation for those who provide fully flexible contributions to maintain a strong, independent WHO.