The World Health Organization released a new practical manual aimed at helping health-care workers across the Western Pacific to combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
AMR occurs when bacteria and other disease-causing organisms develop resistance to medicines used to treat infections, making illnesses harder to cure and increasing the risk of severe disease, death and wider transmission.
WHO has described AMR as one of the most serious global health challenges, threatening to reverse decades of medical progress and undermining treatments ranging from routine surgeries to cancer care and maternal health services.
The new publication, Strengthening Clinical Diagnostic Stewardship in the Western Pacific Region: A Practical Manual, provides practical guidance for health-care facilities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, on improving the use of diagnostic testing to support patient care and strengthen surveillance systems.
By accurately identifying the organisms responsible for infections, health-care workers can improve treatment decisions, detect hospital-associated infections and outbreaks earlier, and help prevent the unnecessary use of antimicrobial medicines.
Saving lives
WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Dr Saia Ma'u Piukala said, “Improvements in clinical diagnostic stewardship will save lives by promoting accurate and timely diagnosis, leading to better individual patient management and outcomes, better-quality AMR surveillance data and reductions in low-value health care.”
WHO said the approach also reduces unnecessary testing and the misuse of limited health resources while improving the quality of data used to monitor antimicrobial resistance trends.
The new manual complements several existing WHO resources, including guidance on responding to outbreaks of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens in health-care facilities and establishing national and local AMR surveillance systems.
These tools have already been used during WHO support missions and training programmes across the region, including in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Viet Nam.
The publication was developed with support from the European Union and the governments of Japan and the United Kingdom through the Fleming Fund.
WHO said it would continue supporting integrated approaches to tackling AMR in an effort to preserve the effectiveness of antimicrobial medicines and protect future generations from the growing threat posed by drug-resistant infections.
