A new publication by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) identifies priority actions pharmacists should take to minimise antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The publication presents six ‘AMR roadmaps’, one for each of the World Health Organisation regions, that define and prioritise major milestones toward mitigating AMR for the period 2024 to 2028.
The roadmaps were developed by FIP in collaboration with its regional pharmaceutical forums and, for the European Region, with FIP member organisations in Europe as there is no FIP regional pharmaceutical forum in the European region.
The roadmap for the African Region describes eight AMR and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) priority actions, including encouraging the use of point-of-care diagnostic tools to differentiate between viral and bacterial infections and inform the selection of antimicrobials. Six actions for pharmacists across the region of the Americas are prioritised, including educating other healthcare providers about AMR and encouraging interprofessional collaboration within AMS programmes.
The publication also presents various activities that have already been undertaken in countries of each region. For example, in the Eastern Mediterranean region, pharmacists are monitoring and supporting patients who have been exposed to antimicrobial resistant microorganisms.
“AMR should be a concern for every country, and for pharmacists in every country. FIP is supporting the profession to combat AMR in a number of ways, including that one of the 21 FIP Development Goals guiding the transformation of the profession is antimicrobial stewardship. These new roadmaps have been developed to follow previous roadmaps for the 2020 to 2024 period, so that we can continue to drive actions on AMR,” said Manjiri Gharat, co-chair of the FIP AMR Commission (to September 2024) and contributor to the publication.
