Neglected tropical diseases and One Health: gearing up against antimicrobial resistance to secure the safety of future generations, meeting report, 24 November 2020
Overview
A WHO webinar on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and antimicrobial resistance was held virtually on 24 November 2020 as part of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. The agenda is annexed to this report.
World Antimicrobial Awareness Week aims to increase awareness of global antimicrobial resistance and encourage best practices among the general public, health workers and policy-makers to avoid the further emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. A global action plan to tackle the growing problem of resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines was endorsed by the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015. One of its key objectives is to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance through effective communication, education and training. World Antimicrobial Awareness Week is observed annually from 18 to 24 November.
Most NTD programmes depend on several medicines to scale up interventions for the control, elimi-nation and eradication of these diseases. As such, it is critical and was agreed to take part actively in the movement to preserve antimicrobial medicines. The theme of this year’s campaign – United to preserve antimicrobials – is well aligned with the identification of antimicrobial resistance in the NTD road map for 2021–2030 as one of the risks that requires close monitoring in both humans and animals to reduce the potential negative impact on limited NTD therapeutic arsenals.
Antimicrobials are part of the arsenal that the NTD community has at its disposal to save lives and are critical in many ways to treat both common and more serious infections. Whenever antimicrobials are used, however, they have the potential to cause side-effects and contribute to various types of resistance; this constitutes today a potential threat to public health.
Participants heard that the wider Antimicrobial Awareness Week would include wide-ranging discus-sions to raise awareness about antimicrobial resistance, how and when antimicrobials should be taken, how populations can remain healthy, and how the fight against resistance can ensure these treatments remain available for future generations.
For NTDs specifically, the potential emergence of drug resistance is real: many programmes depend heavily on antimicrobials for preventive and curative chemotherapy. Widespread resistance to currently used medicines has the potential, therefore, to jeopardize entire interventions and put at risk global programmes that currently treat millions of marginalized populations.
The aim of the webinar was to increase awareness of global antimicrobial resistance, to explore related issues and to encourage best practices among stakeholders and policy-makers to avoid the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections in general and for NTDs in particular.
