World Antimicrobial Awareness Week Educates about Health Threat from Medication Misuse
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines. This makes infections harder to treat and increases the risk of severe illness and death.
As a result, antimicrobial medicines become less effective and resistant organisms may spread. AMR is one of the top global public health and development threats, and is driven by misuse and overuse of antibiotics, anti-virals, anti-fungals and anti-parasitics.
World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) is a yearly global campaign to raise awareness and understanding of the development and spread of drug resistance, and promote best practices among healthcare providers, animal and plant health practitioners and the general public. Ultimately, combating antimicrobial resistance calls for a “One Health” approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and the shared environment.
Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH), led by its Antimicrobial Stewardship committee, marked the awareness week with a series of educational sessions on the use of empiric antimicrobial therapy guidelines for the healthcare workers. The MTRH Drugs and Therapeutics Committee has recently developed the guidelines to provide concise, evidence-based guidance on how to optimize use of antibiotics. It is the second public hospital in the country to develop and begin implementing these guidelines.
The empiric guidelines include information on the choice of antibiotic, dose, route of administration, and duration of treatment for more than 15 of the most common clinical infections. The guidelines are also informed by an analysis of resistance patterns identified by the MTRH microbiology lab in the prior year. It also includes some guidance on diagnostic stewardship and antimicrobial stewardship as well as the antibiotic AWaRe classification, which is a system of classifying antibiotics based on their potential impact on antimicrobial resistance.
The Pfizer Foundation awarded a multi-year grant to support the AMPATH AMR program and recently renewed their support with an $800,000 grant to “implement a model of improved care for infectious diseases and antimicrobial stewardship in western Kenya.” Principal investigators for the grant are Charles Kwobah MBChB, MMED and Shamim Ali MD, MMED from Moi University School of Medicine; and Suzanne Goodrich, MD, and Adrian Gardner MD, MPH, from Indiana University School of Medicine. The infectious disease physicians at MTRH and Moi University are also supported in these efforts by other IU infectious disease-trained faculty who live and work in Eldoret full-time: Bill Stauffer, MD, executive site director for the AMPATH Consortium; and Lu’aie Kailani, MD, AMPATH Consortium internal medicine team leader; as well as faculty from IU and other consortium institutions including Stanford University.
The AMPATH AMR project, which began in 2019, is focused on five areas including:
Conducting ongoing facility needs assessment
Enhancing microbiology laboratory capacity
Generating reliable microbiology data
Implementing appropriate antimicrobial education and stewardship activities
Enhancing capacity for infection prevention
Other WAAW activities included outreach and education sessions for the healthcare promoters from Bungoma and Elgeyo-Marakwet counties, and a walk from the MTRH Chandaria Cancer and Chronic Diseases Centre across Eldoret Town to raise awareness.
While flagging off the walk, Dr. Benjamin Tarus, stated that ‘’We all have a role to play in taking steps to improve our antibiotic prescriptions and use. It is vital for everyone--health care workers, the community and policy makers--to ensure that we take, prescribe and purchase antimicrobials only when they are indicated and for the duration of time that is required.’’