2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: Antimicrobial Resistance

WHO LAUNCHES AWaRe TOOL TO GUIDE ANTIBIOTIC USE

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered: AWaRe- antibiotic tool – significance, aim, threats, Antimicrobial resistance

News Flash

WHO Essential Medicine List recently developed AWaRe tool to contain rising resistance and make antibiotic use safer and more effective.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a global campaign that urges countries to adopt its new online tool aimed at guiding policy-makers and health workers to use antibiotics safely and more effectively.

The tool classifies antibiotics into three groups:

A: Access – antibiotics used to treat the most common and serious infections.
Wa: Watch – antibiotics available at all times in the healthcare system.
Re: Reserve – antibiotics to be used sparingly or preserved and used only as a last resort.

Significance of AWaRe tool

It specifies which antibiotics to use for the most common and serious infections, which ones should be available at all times in the healthcare system, and those that must be used sparingly or preserved and used only as a last resort.
Using Access antibiotics lowers the risk of resistance because they are ‘narrow-spectrum’ antibiotics.

Aim

To increase the proportion of the global consumption of antibiotics in the Access group to at least 60%.
To reduce the use of the antibiotics most at risk of resistance from the Watch and Reserve groups.

Possible Threats

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent health and development threat that continued to escalate globally.
Currently, it is estimated that more than 50% of antibiotics in many countries are used inappropriately.
Another important concern is the spread of resistant gram-negative bacteria (Acinetobacter, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae).
These bacteria, which are commonly seen in hospitalized patients, cause infections like pneumonia, bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections and meningitis.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of a microorganism (like bacteria, viruses, and some parasites) to stop an antimicrobial (such as antibiotics, antivirals, and antimalarials) from working against it. As a result, standard treatments become ineffective, infections persist and may spread to others.

Antibiotic resistance is estimated to kill 50 million by 2050 worldwide.

Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance

At the Sixty-eight World Health Assembly in May 2015, the World Health Assembly endorsed a global action plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance.

To achieve this goal, the global action plan sets out five strategic objectives:

To improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance.
To strengthen knowledge through surveillance and research.
To reduce the incidence of infection.
To optimize the use of antimicrobial agents.
Develop the economic case for sustainable investment that takes account of the needs of all countries, and increase investment in new medicines, diagnostic tools, vaccines, and other interventions.

World Antibiotic Awareness Week – November 11-17,2019

It aims to increase global awareness of antibiotic resistance (AMR) and to encourage best practices among the general public, health workers and policymakers to avoid the further emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance.

Source: WHO

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