India develops National Action Plan to combat Antimicrobial Resistance

April 20, 2017

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare announced the finalization of India’s comprehensive and multi-sectoral National Action Plan at the ‘Inter-Ministerial Consultation on AMR containment’ held at New Delhi. The consultation was attended by various ministers including Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan, and Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Anil Madhav Dave. The Ministers signed a ‘Delhi Declaration’ to contain Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).
The Delhi Declaration calls for the support of all stakeholders including UN, WHO, FAO and other UN agencies, civil society organizations etc., in developing and implementing the national and state action plans on AMR. The National action plan has objectives of enhancing awareness, strengthening surveillance, improving rational use of antibiotics, reducing infections and promoting research

Governmental interventions

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has set up a National Anti-Microbial Resistance Research and Surveillance Network (AMRRSN) to enable compilation of data of AMR at the national level.
Under AMRRSN, ICMR is carrying out surveillance of drug resistance to antibiotics in the following six pathogenic groups:

Diarrhoeagenic bacterial organisms
Enteric fever pathogens
Enterobacteriaceae causing sepsis
Gramnegative Non-fermenters
Gram positives including MRSA
Fungal infections.

In addition, the health ministry enacted regulations to regulate the sale of antibiotics and brought out National Guidelines for the use of antibiotics.
Further, the National Programme for Containment of AMR is under implementation in 12th Five Year Plan with the following objectives:

To establish a laboratory-based surveillance system by strengthening laboratories.
To generate quality data on AMR for pathogens of public health importance.
To generate awareness among healthcare providers and in the community regarding the rational use of antibiotics.
To strengthen infection control guidelines and practices and promote rational use of antibiotics.

AMR

Antibiotic drug resistance is developed in the micro-organisms. AMR is the ability of a microorganism such as bacteria, viruses etc., to render the anti-microbial such as antibiotics, antivirals and antimalarials ineffective against them. It results in failure of standard treatments and the spread of infections.

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