UK Five Year Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy 2013 to 2018 - Part II of II

If you have missed the first part of this summary, please check the previous post by accessing here.

As explained before, I read the 43 pages that together constitute the UK five year antimicrobial resistance strategy 2013-2018 and summarised the hot lines for those who cannot be bothered reading it in full or just have too much on their plates at the moment. Anyways, here is the second part:

Meeting the Challenge

The UK government cannot deliver the action necessary to minimise the spread of AMR on its own.

This [...] describes the constitution and types of activities each sector is being asked to make to help deliver the overarching actions detailed in Annex B. They are broadly grouped under the 3 strategic aims of the Strategy.

The Human Health and Social Care Sector

Improve the knowledge and understanding of AMR by:

• finding ways to raise awareness, increase public engagement and encourage societal changes in behaviour.

Stimulate the development of new antibiotics, diagnostics and novel therapies by:

• implementing new immunisation programmes as recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI),38 improving vaccination coverage by those groups with traditionally low uptake and promoting development of new vaccines including those used against multi-drug resistant organisms.

Livestock, Food Retail and Veterinary Sectors

Conserve and steward the effectiveness of existing treatments by:

• encouraging animal keepers to work closely with their veterinary surgeons to prioritise diagnosis of disease in livestock and companion animals, and to encourage early use of appropriate diagnostic testing, in particular, bacterial culture and sensitivity tests,

Research Councils, other research funders and academics

Improve the knowledge and understanding of AMR by:

• developing AMR research capability in the following areas:

1.  o novel approaches to surveillance and better integration of information infrastructure to determine the spread of infectious disease and resistance (including across species),
2.  development and use of rapid diagnostics, including point-of-care diagnostics to avoid inappropriate treatment and reduce antibiotic misuse,
3.  innovation in antimicrobial development and the provision of evidence for novel molecules to be developed into drugs.

Conserve and steward the effectiveness of existing treatments by:

• exploring the possibility of developing a ‘drug resistance index’ to communicate gaps in antibiotic effectiveness to non-experts and help aggregate data on resistance to various drugs to assess trends in drug resistance over time and across locations,

Pharmaceutical Industry

Industry has a corporate and social responsibility to contribute to work to tackle AMR by finding ways of extending the life of antibiotics, making the supply of effective antibiotics sustainable, facilitating society in being better custodians of these valuable resources and using them optimally both now and the future.

Stimulate the development of new antibiotics, rapid diagnostics and novel therapies by:

• developing new treatments for all infections
• developing new vaccines targeted at multi-resistant organisms.

I honestly hope this summary made a difference and helped you understand the aims, objectives and strategies studied to tackle antimicrobial drug resistance in the UK. If you want to access the original document please access here.