Recommendations for consideration by UN Member States in the outcome document of the High-level Meeting on AMR in September 2024...
COMMENT (NPW): I have not had a chance to read the report in full, but it appears to say little if anything about the availability and use of reliable information to empower health professionals and patients with knowledge and understanding to select antibiotics appropriately. As HIFA reported when we published our systematic review in 2020: 'How primary healthcare workers obtain information for safe prescribing in LMICs':
'There can be no area of health more important than access to reliable information to inform prescribing, no area of health that is more perverted by commercial interests, and no area of health that presents such an important and growing existential threat to human existence - the predicted post-antibiotic apocalypse, with 50 million deaths per year, partly driven by lack of access to reliable information on antibiotics.'
https://www.hifa.org/projects/prescribers-and-users-medicines (see Publications)
https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/5/4/e002094.full.pdf
One of the recommendations in the new report is: Antibiotic stewardship and responsible use in humans: By 2030, ACCESS group antibiotics comprise at least 80% of overall human antibiotic consumption.
'ACCESS antibiotics are antibiotics with a narrow spectrum of activity, generally with less side-effects, a lower potential for the selection of antimicrobial resistance and of lower cost.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10042089/
To have any chance of reaching 80% and reducing the overuse of other antibiotics that accelerate resistance, it is imperative that both providers and users have access to relevant, reliable information on prescribing and use.
Some years ago, WHO reported: ‘Globally, most prescribers receive most of their prescribing information from the pharmaceutical industry and in many countries this is the only information they receive.’ We have little if any evidence that the situation is better today. This is an indictment on the whole global evidence ecosystem.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
