ASLM’s commitment to fighting AMR in Africa and beyond

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) kills 70,000 patients annually. AMR will kill 10 million people every year by 2050 if it is not contained1. Resistant infections require more expensive drugs, longer stays in hospitals, and will push another 28 million people into poverty2.

ASLM works with countries and stakeholders to move the agenda towards the containment of AMR through laboratory-based surveillance and clinical testing.

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ASLM leads various Fleming Fund regional grants, including the Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP), External Quality Assessment grant for Africa (EQuAFRICA), Qualifying the Workforce for AMR Surveillance in Africa and Asia (QWArS), the Tanzania Fellowship Scheme, and the ASLM AMR Community of Practice.

ASLM also conducts AMR containment activities and laboratory systems and networks strengthening on AMR detection and surveillance through the USAID IDDS project as part of the GHSA.

ASLM works in alignment with the global AMR action plans and supports the implementation of the Africa CDC AMRSNET3.

References

  1. https://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/160525_Final%20paper_with%20cover.pdf
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929930/pdf/idr-12-3903.pdf
  3. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241509763

Projects

EQuAFRICA

ASLM and its partners are working towards the establishment of regional capacity and coordination to provide bacteriology EQA Proficiency Testing panels in 14 Fleming Fund priority countries.

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MAAP

The Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP), is engaged in 14 countries, collecting info on the capacity of 393 labs conducting clinical bacteriology testing.

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QWArS

QWArS builds AMR surveillance capacity from the human and animal health sector, towards standardised competencies fit for the context of African and Asian settings.

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Fleming Fund Fellowship Tanzania

The Fleming Fund Tanzania Fellowship Scheme aims at strengthening the skills and capacity of leaders implementing AMR surveillance in animal and human health sectors in Tanzania.

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AMR CoP

The AMR CoP connects key AMR stakeholders among Fleming Fund countries and beyond to better share information and support one another to curb antimicrobial resistance.

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USAID IDDS

As part of the the Infectious Disease Detection and Surveillance (IDDS) project ASLM has been supporting Cameroon to detect priority pathogens and AMR in both humans and animals.

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AMR Resource Library

The resources gathered here are designed to provide stakeholders with tools, guidance, information and best practices, to help them improve AMR surveillance, detection capabilities and policy planning.

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Partners

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  • Africa CDC Framework for Antimicrobial Resistance – This document outlines Africa CDC’s framework for addressing AMR in Africa through 2023, including the establishment of the Anti-Microbial Resistance Surveillance Network (AMRSNET).
  • The National Laboratory Quality Framework – This serves as a practical guidance for countries during the development or updating of their national laboratory quality policies and strategic plans that supports labs in implementing and continued maintenance of laboratory quality management systems.
  • WHO Implementation Handbook for National Action Plans on Antimicrobial Resistance: guidance for the human health sector – this guidance provides a practical, stepwise approach to the implementation of the national action plans on AMR within the human health sector; and to provide a process and collation of existing WHO tools to prioritize, cost, implement, monitor and evaluate national action plan activities.
  • WHO Costing and Budgeting Tool for National Action Plans on AMR – This can be used to calculate and visualize detailed costs for prioritised activities included in the NAPs on AMR. It can be filled using a modular approach, which allows different sectors, ministries or event departments to fill in the tool independently, and these plans can then be consolidated into one national costed plan.
  • Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally – This report by Jim O’Neill describes the global approach to ensuring effective use of antibiotics.
  • The Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance – The plan describes approaches to ensuring safe and effective use of antibiotics.
  • WHONET – Free laboratory-based data management and analysis tool to support antimicrobial resistance surveillance developed and supported by WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
  • The Laboratory Assessment of Antimicrobial Resistance Testing Capacity (LAARC) – This laboratory assessment tool is for use in clinical bacteriology laboratories and provides tools to assess practices that can enhance the quality of antimicrobial resistance data.
  • LARC Quality Improvement Collaborative Workbook – Provides continuous quality improvement methodologies and tools. LARC supports clinicians, laboratorians and data record units to work together and improve the proportion of viral load test results put in patients’ files.
  • The LabNet Scorecard – This matrix is for the assessment of national laboratory network functionality and progress, and is intended to help inform ways to strengthen and improve them.
  • MAAP AMR Country Reports – Read 14 country reports of AMR and antimicrobial consumption (AMC) data collected in the 14 countries from 2016 to 2019.
  • MAAP Policy Brief and Infographic – These summarise the results of the MAAP project, and the analysis and interpretation of AMR and antimicrobial consumption (AMC) data collected from 2016 to 2019 from 14 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Explore more AMR resources at ASLM’s Resource Centre, here.