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.
Global-PPS is again joining the World Antibiotic Awareness Week, a global campaign improving awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and encouraging best practices. This year’s theme is again ‘Preventing antimicrobial resistance together’. It focuses on a One Health approach and inspires collaboration across sectors. AMR is a threat to humans, animals, plants and the environment and fighting it is a global endeavour.
Read our interview with Dr. Noritaka Sekiya, a physician for infectious diseases at the Tokyo Metropolitan Cancer and Infectious Diseases Center Komagome Hospital in Japan. He’s working as a consultant in infectious diseases and infection prevention & control. Dr. Sekiya’s other expertise is field epidemiology. In this interview, he addresses the AMR situation in Japan and how using Global-PPS has been a part of tackling this problem.
The Global-PPS tool is continuously improved and expanded. Our newest addition is the interactive reporting dashboard, now available on the online Global-PPS data entry environment. This new feature is meant to replace the longitudinal feedback reports in the pdf-format, and will enable hospitals to customise their analyses.
Read our interview with Professor Gordana Mijovic and Doctor Ivana Djuković, expert members from the Montenegrin Global-PPS network. In this testimonial, they elaborate on the challenges and barriers in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the advantages of collaborating with Global-PPS, and the future perspectives of AMR reduction in Montenegro .
Global-PPS is launching a new addition to its web-based tool, namely the outpatient module. This new feature was developed following requests of several Global-PPS participants, as patient-level data from the outpatient setting are generally limited.
This past week, the 33rd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, ECCMID, took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. Just as last year, Global-PPS was there to present their findings.
Our Selection of Publications has been updated for 2023. The document presents the Global Point Prevalence Survey, its methodology and facilitating features.
Last week, drive-AMS organised a Training of Trainers Course in Nijmegen, hosted by Radboudumc. The course combined their Dutch AMS Masterclass and the Global-PPS tool and expertise. It was the perfect opportunity to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas!
To strengthen the worldwide response to IFDs and antifungal resistance, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has developed a Fungal Priority Pathogens List (FPPL). Its aim is to focus and drive further research and policy interventions. This list was inspired by the Bacterial Priority Pathogens List that WHO published in 2017.
On 9 December 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published the WHO AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) Antibiotic Book. It is a concise, evidence-based guide for choosing antibiotics, doses, routes of administration and duration of treatment for more than 30 of the most common clinical infections in children and adults, in both primary health care and hospital settings.
On the 1st of November 2022, Radboud University Medical Centre (Radboudumc) and University of Antwerp joined forces to launch drive-AMS, a new project funded under the EU4Health Programme. This project aims to intensify antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes across the European Union by improving prudent antimicrobial use (AMU) and strengthening AMU surveillance, which are both key priorities of the EU One Health Action Plan on AMR.
Every year from 18 until 24 November the World of Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) takes place. It is a global campaign to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and encourages best practices among the public, One Health stakeholders, and policymakers. They all play a critical role in reducing the further emergence and spread of AMR.
The Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) has published a paper describing the development and implementation of an Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) checklist for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Doctor Anthony Enimil is a Paediatric Infectious Disease Specialist, based in the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Ghana. He is also a member of the Hospital Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee. In this interview, Anthony shares his experience with Global-PPS, the advantages of the study and some future challenges.
Doctors Without Borders will soon deploy its innovative Antibiogo application in several of its laboratories in Mali, Jordan, Yemen and the Central African Republic. This free, open source and offline downloadable Android application will contribute to an increase of information technology to support antimicrobial prescribing in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC).