All workshop participants 

Innovate4AMR: http://innovate4amr.org/

Innovate4AMR is a concept that focuses on empowering current and future health professionals to take initiative in solving the problems they face in their respective health care settings. What makes Innovate4AMR different from traditional competitions is our focus on implementation rather than just rewarding good ideas. We are not searching for a “silver bullet” to solve AMR. Instead we want to identify real-life local projects that have the potential to make a positive and scalable impact on communities. We want to be the bridge connecting these projects to the global AMR community

ReAct: https://www.reactgroup.org/

The International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA): https://ifmsa.org/

The IDEA (Innovation +Design Enabling Access) Initative at the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health.

As part of World Antibiotic Awareness Week 2018, students from around the world have come together this week for the Innovate4AMR Capacity Building Workshop in Geneva, hosted by ReACT and IFSMA in collaboration with WHO and South Centre.  

As the final stage of Innovate4AMR competition seeking innovative and creative solutions to address the issues of AMR, the three-day workshop saw the 11 finalist teams present their solutions to Antimicrobial stewardship in resource-limited healthcare settings to various experts across the AMR Secretariat.

Competing teams were encouraged to develop ideas that were context-specific and carefully crafted to reflect the AMR landscape of a given geographic area, while also considering the financial sustainability and real-world feasibility of their projects. Students of multiple disciplines were also encouraged to participate, including but not limited to medicine, public health, engineering, agriculture, supply chain, business management and finance.

In addition to team presentations, the Geneva workshop included Q&A sessions with public health researchers, as well as Director of WHO’s AMR Secretariat, Dr. Marc Sprenger.

“Competitions like this are the springboard for long-term solutions to antimicrobial resistance,” he said. “It’s been great to see the variety of approaches that have been applied.”

Concluding the workshop, team AMRhark’ay was announced with the overall ‘outstanding presentation’ from this year’s competition. Their project focused on empowering mothers (or caregivers) in both urban and rural communities in Peru by giving them necessary knowledge to address the issues on antimicrobial resistance in the pediatric population. Their project highlighted the need to provide culturally sensitive approaches to the Quechua and Aymara-speaking populations. The Peruvian team, consisted of Alicia Isabel Maldonado Félix from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and Omar Calep Bellota Segovia from Universidad Católica de Santa María.

Amongst the other teams were ‘The Global Health Enthusiasts’*, from the University of Ibanda, Nigeria who offered a different approach, addressing poor levels of prescription monitoring, by  focusing on the regulation and monitoring of antibiotic sales, through the ‘Smart Antibiotics Purchase Authorization Card’ and regional Central Antibiotics Stores to disseminate antibiotics.

Another finalist team brought together Honduras’ Augusto Baron Cruz and Pakistan’s, Nishwa Azeem, whose project ‘BioTrack’ focused on the development of a behavioral intervention strategy designed to improve the general public’s adherence to antibiotic treatment and massive data recollection on antibiotic usage.

From 145 proposals received globally and more than 1200 students, the participants from the 11 finalist teams spanned from Honduras, China, India, Peru, Philippines, Nigeria, Canada, USA, Pakistan and Uganda; a testament to the global nature of the AMR issue.

“The effects of antimicrobial resistance are being felt around the world. Everybody is susceptible to these infections. This is a global problem. We need global solutions that can be implemented in local situations too,” Dr. Sprenger said.

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* The Global Health Enthusiasts Team was unable to attend the workshop in Geneva, due to unforeseen circumstances.