The 3rd Global Patient Safety Challenge: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
By WHO’s World Alliance for Patient Safety
In 2008, the World Alliance for Patient Safety, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) patient safety programme, announced its 3rd Global Patient Safety Challenge: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance. The work will build upon the previous work of WHO, particularly the Global Strategy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance published in 2001. The new project, under the leadership of David Heymann and Didier Pittet, will facilitate an international coalition to address the threat to patient safety posed by antimicrobial resistance.
The work will be undertaken in two stages. During the initial ‘foundation’ period in 2008 and 2009, five expert working groups are meeting to formulate a WHO Global Work Plan for Antimicrobial Resistance. In 2010, WHO will launch the ‘challenge’ component, encouraging all member states to sign up to an intervention, or a focused bundle of interventions, to reduce the threat of resistance.
The readers of this feature guest column will be more aware than most of the patchwork nature of issues surrounding antimicrobial resistance. At a first international consultation in July 2008, at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, it was agreed that the 3rd Patient Safety Challenge will concentrate on five key action areas:
- Animal husbandry, aquaculture and agriculture including the examination of the regulation of antimicrobial use in food production processes.
- Infection control including the promotion of simple and effective interventions to reduce transmission of resistant microbes in both hospital and community settings.
- Rational drug use and regulation including access, quality, and misuse of antimicrobial agents.
- Research and development of efficient and affordable diagnostic methods to support rapid targeted treatment and new antimicrobial agents including vaccines and alternative therapies.
- Surveillance including developing laboratory capacity and the development of a long-term strategy to collect and report high quality data in a systematic fashion.
In November 2008, expert working groups were formed. They will meet again this month to finalize first drafts of chapters in the Global Work Plan. These chapters will summarize current knowledge, highlight gaps in understanding, and suggest intervention priorities. It is hoped that this Work Plan will act as a tool for advocacy at the national level, but also suggest a series of practical interventions that individual countries can adopt.
It is anticipated that these expert working groups will address antimicrobial resistance with a particular focus on antibacterial resistance. This will be complemented by expertise from well-established disease specific programmes at WHO such as HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis.
In conjunction with these efforts, WHO will work to estimate the global burden of antimicrobial resistance.
The exact interventions that form the focus of the third challenge are still under discussion, and will be decided through a wide consultative process. The aim is to capture one intervention, or a small number of interventions, that together create an iconic focus for the international movement to reduce the threat of resistance.
WHO appreciates the difficult nature of this task. Attempts to tackle this multifactoral and deeply complex issue have been tried before and have often failed. However, it is hoped that the current approach, drawing on the experience of a wide community of experts, and aiming for practical interventions for member states to adopt, will start to turn the tide against the growing threat of resistance.
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