‘Antimicrobial Resistance a global health threat’

Highlighting that Antimicrobial Resistance is a global health threat, the Minister of State for health Anupriya Patel has called for an urgent action through the ‘One Health’ approach that fosters cooperation across human, animal, and plant health, as well as environmental and other relevant sectors. She emphasised the importance of surveillance, collaboration, and addressing critical barriers to “antimicrobial access” as she outlined a set of steps to implement the commitments made in the declaration on AMR.

Ms Patel was addressing the 4th Ministerial High-level Global Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “India proposes a comprehensive approach aimed at improving AMR detection and surveillance capacities across sectors, enabling the use of data to guide evidence-based antimicrobial usage at both local and national levels. This would lay the foundation for the creation of integrated and inter-operable surveillance systems across sectors,” she said.

Calling for an increased support to member states in strengthening sectoral and multisectoral collaboration, particularly through the quadripartite joint secretariat, She said that India proposes to prioritise sustainable financing and research investments to enhance governance in the fight against AMR. It also supports the creation of an AMR Multi-partner Trust Fund and the establishment of an Independent Panel on Evidence for Action against AMR by the quadripartite organisations in 2025.

The theme of the conference was ‘From Declaration to Implementation – Accelerating Actions Through Multisectoral Partnerships for the Containment of AMR.’ The ‘Jedda Commitments’ issued at the conference resolved to translate the Political Declaration from the UNGA HLM on AMR into practical commitments for urgent action, inter alia, committing to create national AMR multi-sectoral coordinating bodies respecting the multipronged One-Health challenges.