Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Thursday stressed on the need for coordinated efforts to address the growing menace of antimicrobial resistance in the country. He also discussed the implementation of the National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (NAP-AMR) at the inter-sectoral coordination committee meeting held under his chairmanship.

“Antimicrobial resistance (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,” Bhushan underlined.

He further urged the partner ministries and departments to work in a convergent mode with whole of government approach to bring together the expertise and domain knowledge for a comprehensive action plan with key performance indicators that can be periodically monitored.

Representatives from the ministries and departments also presented the steps taken by them towards prevention and control of AMR.

The Inter-sectoral Coordination Committee on AMR (ISCC-AMR) is a high level committee chaired by the health secretary with active participation from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR); Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries; Department of Biotechnology; CSIR; CDSCO; FSSAI; AYUSH; NMC; DGHS; Ministry of Food Processing Industries; and Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change.

Lav Agarwal, additional secretary, health ministry said the Centre has identified anti-microbial resistance 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 ministries concerned 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.

The strategic objectives of NAP-AMR include enhancing awareness and understanding among people through communication and IEC activities.

It also entails 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, the ministry said.

Towards this, National Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control in healthcare facilities were issued in January 2020. Anti-microbial 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 meeting also discussed the ongoing initiatives, 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.

It was decided that based on the learnings from the implementation of the ongoing NAP-AMR, the health ministry will prepare the National Action Plan on AMR 2.0, duly converging ongoing initiatives under different ministries so that concerted efforts towards control of AMR could be strengthened.