Strengthening implementation of National Action Plans through a One Health AMR full economic costing exercise

Environment

Interventions

Surveillance

Therapeutics

Transmission

Research Project: 2022-01-05 - 2025-04-30
Total sum awarded: €857 972

For most low-income countries 2 to 3 years have passed since the approval of their National Action Plans (NAPs) for implementing an agreed upon list of measures to stem the growth of antibiotic resistance. Yet progress on NAP implementation remains very limited. This is due in part to a low sense of urgency regarding AMR that reflects an incomplete perception of its epidemiological and financial burden. This project aims to utilize the costing framework recently developed by the GAP ONE Network as a tool to: 1. Estimate the full economic burden of AMR (epidemiological and financial) in two sub-Saharan countries in order to provide a clear picture of what is at stake if NAP implementation continues to stagnate. This should help enhance the will to take greater action to make it possible from a political standpoint and help mobilize internal resources. 2. Provide international donors with economic evidence to inform funding decisions. 3. Create an adaptable framework for economic analyses to evaluate and compare interventions at local level (to facilitate cost-effectiveness analyses) and inform national strategies for scale-up to combat AMR 4. Use the costing process itself to bring stakeholders together to foster both collaboration and leadership for implementing NAPs using the One Health approach.

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  • Chantal Morel, University Hospital Bonn, Germany (Coordinator)
  • Finola Leonard, University College Dublin, Ireland (Partner)
  • Chisomo Msefula, University of Malawi, College of Medicine, Malawi (Partner)
  • Luigia Scudeller, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Bologna, Italy (Partner)
  • Lloyd Matowe, Eden University, Zambia (Partner)
  • Herman Goosens, University of Antwerp, Belgium (Partner)

Antibiotic resistance costs lives and money. Yet if we don't have a good grasp of the numbers we will never know where it lies in terms of our other national priorities. In Africa we have especially little evidence on how people, animals, and the environment are affected by it. So those who make decisions do not see it at a particular problem -- and, as a consequence, those who hold the purse strings in government do not fund the necessary efforts to combat antibiotic resistance. This project will estimate the full economic burden imposed by antibiotic resistance (epidemiological and financial) in Malawi and Zambia in order to fill this evidence gap. Findings from this work should help enhance political will to take greater action. It will also allow more informed decisions to be made about how best to tackle antibiotic resistance locally by calculating the important cost-related numbers that allow different strategies to be compared. Crucially this project will bring together the key people needed to make real and further progress on this issue each of these two countries. And, if successful, Malawi and Zambia will be setting the example for how to combat antibiotic resistance in other parts of Africa.

Call

2021 - One Health interventions to prevent or reduce the development and transmission of AMR