Today marks the start of the World Antibiotic Awareness Week (WAAW), an annual initiative led by WHO bringing attention to AMR and promoting best practices worldwide. This year’s campaign emphasises the importance of education and taking concrete actions to tackle this critical healthcare challenge.
Meet Shaheen Mehtar, professor of Infection Prevention and Control in South Africa. As a founding member of the Infection Control Africa Network, she has played a pivotal role in shaping infection control practices across the continent. In this interview, Prof. Mehtar discusses her work with the Global Point Prevalence Survey, the successes and challenges of implementing antimicrobial stewardship programs, and her hopes for improving IPC efforts in both hospital and outpatient settings.
Dr. Biljana Carevic, a pioneering hospital epidemiologist, has dedicated her career to infection control and antibiotic stewardship. In this interview, Biljana discusses her work, the challenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Serbia versus Norway, and her ongoing efforts with the Global Point Prevalence Survey.
Last Friday, the annual Global-PPS meeting in collaboration with bioMérieux took place on the occasion of ESCMID Global 2024, formerly known as ECCMID. Over 100 participants attended the hybrid meeting to learn more about the project’s activities, strategies and results. It was a special edition as Global-PPS also celebrated its 10 year anniversary!
A recent study compared antimicrobial prescribing patterns in paediatric patients from three hospitals in Sanandaj, Western Iran, with paediatric patients from hospitals in Southeast Asia and Europe. Standardised 2019 Global-PPS data were used.
Read our interview with Amanda Daniel, Lead Nurse and IPC Specialist from Wales who worked in a Ugandan hospital to help identify antimicrobial prescribing rates. The implementation of the Global-PPS in Uganda highlighted both the challenges and opportunities in addressing AMR and improving infection prevention and control practices.
We interviewed Dr. Herberth Maldonado from Guatemala, who has made great efforts in combatting antimicrobial resistance in his country. He shares his insights and experiences with Global-PPS, what challenges he faces and his hopes for the future.
Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), a tertiary care hospital in Nigeria, is a loyal member in the Global-PPS network with annual multiple participations since 2015. They have been using the Global-PPS data to create a hospital stewardship program and in August 2018, the Nigerian working group on AMS was established.
Launched almost one year ago, the drive-AMS project is gaining significant traction. The project aims to implement antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes in healthcare facilities as an important contribution to the fight against antibiotic resistance.
In June 2024, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp will be organizing a practical 3-week training on antibiotic resistance and its containment at hospital level in low-resource settings.