The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday announced that the Executive Yuan has approved a cross-ministerial five-year “national one-health antimicrobial resistance (AMR) control action plan” for addressing the AMR threat at the national level, starting next year.
The WHO listed AMR as one of the top 10 global health threats, and an UN General Assembly high-level meeting on AMR is to be held in New York tomorrow, in which global leaders are expected to reaffirm their determination to tackle AMR, CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said.
The Executive Yuan in July approved the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s five-year AMR control action plan, which would be implemented from next year to 2029, he said.
Photo: AFP
The plan would be implemented by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, to monitor and prevent AMR, effectively control antimicrobial use in animals and plants, and raise awareness among the public and healthcare professionals, Lo said.
National Taiwan University vice president Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳), an infectious disease expert, said the WHO estimated that globally there are 4.95 million deaths per year associated with AMR, and without a stronger response there would be an average loss of 1.8 years of life expectancy globally by 2035.
The WHO also estimated that a continued rise in resistance would lead to a reduction of 2 to 3.5 percent of the global GDP, and a decline of up to 7.5 percent annually in livestock production, he said.
Chang said the UN’s WHO, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Organization for Animal Health in 2015 adopted a global action plan on AMR, which underscored the need for an effective “one health” approach — a joint effort by various disciplines coming together to provide solutions for human, animal and environmental health against AMR.
The UN General Assembly first held a high-level meeting on AMR in 2016, in which global leaders recognized that AMR is a global health threat and promised to invest continuous and sufficient funding and human resources into setting up and executing national-level action plans, he said.
The CDC established a national AMR monitoring system in 2009, ran the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program from 2013 to 2015 and offered guidelines for hospitals to optimize the use of antibiotics, Chang said.
It also implemented an AMR control action plan in some hospitals from 2020 to this year, and cooperated with the Ministry of Agriculture under the “one health” approach, he added.
However, some healthcare professionals have warned that the COVID-19 pandemic might have contributed to the worsening of AMR, which is also a global issue, Chang said.
There should be a larger-scale nationwide action plan to fight AMR which is not limited to some hospitals, he said.
The Executive Yuan plans to allocate a NT$200 million (US$6.26 million) budget for the plan next year, Lo said.
Two of the seven main goals in the five-year plan include “reducing human antimicrobial use in healthcare facilities by 5 percent” and “reducing the incidence rate of Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) infection among hospitalized patients by 10 percent,” he said.
Of the eight “superbugs” (strains of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics) monitored in Taiwan, CRAB is the most common bacteria, accounting for about 75 percent of superbugs in intensive care unit patients and about 60 percent of superbugs in hospitalized patients, he added.
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