WHO Efforts to Contain Antimicrobial Resistance
WHO works at local, national, and international levels to build the capacity, technical guidance, and political commitment to address the threat of antimicrobial resistance. The goals are to ensure the provision of high-quality and effective antimicrobials for patients today and the preservation of the life-saving power of antimicrobials for future generations.
World Health Assembly Resolutions
The World Health Assembly has issued a series of Resolutions identifying antimicrobial resistance as a public health priority and directing WHO to support WHO Member States and international efforts to address antimicrobial resistance and to promote the rational use of antimicrobials.
WHO Global Strategy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance
In the late 1990s and 2000, WHO convened a series of meetings and expert groups to address the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. The culmination of this work was the publication in 2001 of public health strategies, technical guidelines, and prioritized recommendationss for implementation in the WHO Global Strategy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance.
WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
Antimicrobial misuse puts the community at risk of severe illness or death due to untreatable infections, and squanders a limited healthcare resource for future generations. Healthcare-associated infections with multidrug-resistant organisms are major causes of death throughout the world. The inappropriate use of antimicrobials by patients, healthcare providers, and food producers is thus increasingly seen as an issue of patient safety.
To highlight the irreversible harm caused by prescribing behavior and inadequate hygiene measures, the WHO-coordinated World Alliance for Patient Safety has chosen antimicrobial resistance as the focus of the Third Global Patient Safety Challenge to be launched in 2010. The Challenge will identify priority actions for implementation in: rational drug use, infection prevention, animal husbandary, surveillance, and research.
- Third Global Patient Safety Challenge: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
- World Alliance for Patient Safety
Technical guidance and capacity-building
WHO provides technical guidelines to support antimicrobial resistance containment and assists countries in the establishment of the needed infrastructure to support national medicines policy, health services, and surveillance capacity.
- WHO Meetings
- Improving antimicrobial use
- Surveillance of antimicrobial use
- Blocking transmission of resistant microbes
- Surveillance of antimicrobial resistance
