Health Ministry planning to prepare National Action Plan on AMR 2.0

With close to 10 mn deaths estimated by 2050 due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the Centre is now stepping up its AMR related strategic initiatives – the Union health ministry will now prepare the National Action Plan on AMR 2.0 converging the ongoing initiatives.

On Thursday, the Union health secretary held a review meeting to discuss the status of implementation of the National Action Plan on AMR (NAP-AMR). “It was decided that based on the learnings from the implementation of the ongoing NAP-AMR, Ministry of Health would prepare the National Action Plan on AMR 2.0 duly converging ongoing initiative under different Ministries so that concerted efforts towards control of AMR could be strengthened,” the Health ministry said.

Antimicrobial resistance happens when germs like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them. That means the germs are not killed and continue to grow. Resistant infections can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat, says the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

AMR has been identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the significant threats to global health. It is already estimated that by the year 2050, 10 million deaths can be attributed to AMR. Increased AMR can throw India’s target to achieve tuberculosis eradication by 2025 off the track.

Some of the strategic objectives of NAP-AMR include enhancing awareness and understanding among people through communication; increasing knowledge and evidence through enhanced surveillance of AMR in human, animal and the environment through the National AMR Surveillance Network (NARS-Net) and state surveillance networks. The third strategic objective is infection prevention and control.

“Towards this, National Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control in healthcare facilities were issued in January 2020. Antimicrobial stewardship constitutes the fourth strategic objective of NAP-AMR. The fifth objective is bringing innovative research and development in new medicines and technologies, while national, sub-national and international collaborations constitute the sixth and final strategic objective of NAP-AMR,” the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.

The meeting discussed the ongoing initiative including an Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) unit being established at NCDC to draft National IPC programme and linkages with IPC under other vertical health programmes,need for developing a digital platform to collect and collate national and state level data on antimicrobial consumption and duly converging human, animal, environment and food sector , focus on creation of state specific Action Plans on AMR,and involvement of research agencies to develop an integrated research agenda on AMR.

Union Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that AMR cannot be tackled in a linear and singular manner. “As the issues and action points are multi-agency across the government and non-government sectors, the action plan to address it requires the joint efforts of all stakeholders through a unified mission mode approach,” he added.

The Inter-Sectoral Coordination Committee on AMR (ISCC-AMR) is a high level committee chaired by Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with participation from Department of Health Research Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR); Dept. of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries; Dept. of Biotechnology; CSIR; CDSCO, FSSAI, AYUSH, NMC, Director General of Health Services (DGHS), MoHFW; Dept. of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries; Ministry of Food Processing Industries and Ministry of Environment & Forest & Climate Change. AMR as a key priority in its National Health Policy, 2017, and India’s National Action Plan for containment of AMR (NAP-AMR) was released in April 2017. The Delhi Declaration on AMR, an inter-ministerial consensus, was signed at the launch of NAP-AMR by the concerned ministries pledging their whole-hearted support in AMR containment. AMR is also one of the three key priorities of India G20 Health Working Group, reflecting its importance at the global level.