Public discussion on the WHO Medically Important Antimicrobial List, 7th Revision (CLOSED)

The WHO Medically Important Antimicrobial List, 7^th Revision

The responsible and prudent use of antimicrobials needs to be improved in all sectors to preserve their public health benefits; antimicrobials that are medically important for human medicine need to be preserved by reducing their use in the non-human sectors. To achieve this goal, WHO developed the first List of Critically Important Antimicrobials in 2005, now renamed the WHO Medically Important Antimicrobial List (WHO MIA List). Since 2009, The WHO MIA List has been updated every other year. In 2019, Member States requested the Director-General to maintain and systematically update the WHO List of Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine.[1]

 The WHO MIA List is a risk management tool that can be used to help with risk-based decision making to minimize the impact of antimicrobial use in non-human sectors on AMR in humans. The WHO MIA list is created to guide international, national, and subnational (local, state, provincial) antimicrobial stewardship efforts.

 The WHO MIA List currently focuses on antibacterial agents and ranks these into three major categories using criteria to assess the relative importance of each antimicrobial agent for human medicine and according to the AMR risk and potential human implications of their use in non-human sectors: (1) critically important antimicrobial (CIA); (2) highly important antimicrobial (HIA); and (3) important antimicrobial (IA) to human medicine.

 The WHO MIA List is intended for national regulators and policymakers in Ministries of Health and Agriculture and authorities responsible for the regulation, monitoring and assuring the responsible and prudent use of antimicrobials as well as veterinarians, veterinary paraprofessionals and other prescribers of antimicrobials, aquatic animal/plant/crop health professionals, and national AMR steering or coordinating committees responsible for the development, implementation and monitoring of the AMR national action plans, policies and standards for mitigating AMR at the national level.

The 7^th revision of the WHO MIA List was supported by the Advisory Group on Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine (AGCIA group) established in 2021

The WHO invites you to provide feedback on the WHO MIA List, 7^th revision

WHO is opening a public discussion for Member States, partners and experts to obtain feedback on the WHO MIA List 7^th revision, content, purpose, criteria, and categorization of medically important antimicrobials.

When providing feedback, WHO would appreciate receiving input on the overall content of the 7^th revision but with particular focus on the following questions:

• Is the purpose of the document clear?
• Is the new approach of basing the groups of antimicrobials on the authorization status appropriate and clearly explained?
• Are the new and revised prioritization factors clearly understood?
• Are the proposed implementation activities providing guidance to countries to improve the responsible and prudent use of antimicrobials in the different sectors?
• Do you have any additional comments to enhance the utility of the MIA List?

The public discussion has now been closed, please find the results below.

WHO will give due consideration to all feedback that complies with the 1000 words limit and is received by the deadline, but will not respond to individual comments directly. All feedback received will be posted publicly on this webpage.