A very good morning dear participants, partners and friends.
It is a pleasure to speak with you today, alongside my Tripartite counterparts, at the conclusion of this week-long advocacy event.
Throughout the week you have highlighted the staggering mortality that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is already responsible for – around 700 000 people annually.
You have underscored AMR’s disastrous economic impact and the gross inefficiencies it continues to cause within health systems.
You have recognized that the battle against AMR is essential to achieving access for all to quality health care, without financial hardship – in other words, to achieving universal health coverage (UHC).
We know the projections: By 2050, unless urgent action is taken, AMR will cause an estimated 10 million deaths annually.
It will cost the global economy an estimated US$ 100 trillion every year.
Momentum to tackle the problem has gathered pace.
In 2011 Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region adopted the Jaipur Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance.
In 2014 the Region made the battle against AMR a Flagship Priority.
The following year, in 2015, Member States supported the adoption of the Global Action Plan on AMR at the World Health Assembly.
By 2018 all 11 countries in the Region had developed national action plans to address AMR, and almost all had enrolled in the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS).
Member States are now signing up to the expanded GLASS platform, which adds antimicrobial consumption to the indicators the platform monitors.
The Region’s many achievements would not have been possible without the high-level and grassroots advocacy that a multitude of stakeholders have been a part of, and which WHO has supported.
I thank you for your efforts.
Advocacy will remain central to the Region’s efforts to prevent and control AMR and will be a focus of the Region’s new WHO-convened AMR Taskforce.
As the theme of this year’s World Antimicrobial Awareness Week highlights, AMR is not only a threat to human and animal health, but also to agriculture and ecosystems.
I look forward to working ever more closely with our Tripartite partners FAO and OIE, and increasingly with the United Nations Environment Programme.
Together we must continue to highlight the need for all stakeholders to adopt a multisectoral “One Health” approach to AMR, which will in turn promote a better understanding of the problem and the need for coordinated action.
Throughout the COVID-19 response, recovery and beyond, we must continue to underscore several pressing needs.
First, for all stakeholders to continue to strengthen surveillance and research to understand the main mechanisms and locations driving AMR.
Second, for all stakeholders to continue to identify and implement best practices that optimize the rational use of antibiotics in both human and non-human sectors.
Third, for health facility administrators and sub-national and national policy-makers to continue to integrate key AMR interventions into policies at all levels.
And fourth, for all countries to adopt WHO’s AWaRe classification tool, which groups antibiotics into “Access”, “Watch” and “Reserve” categories with the aim of enhancing antibiotic stewardship.
Through these and other interventions, our battle against AMR will be advanced, and our quest to achieve UHC, and with it, health for all, accelerated.
I once again thank you for your efforts and look forward to continuing to work with you to strengthen this movement so that all people can benefit from quality-assured and affordable antimicrobial drugs – yes today, but also tomorrow and forever more.