CDC is Taking Global Action to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance

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Posted On: August 2019

Story Highlights
  • Antimicrobial resistance (AR or AMR) has been found in all regions of the world. CDC is working around the world to combat this threat.
  • CDC is spurring others to global action, leading The AMR Challenge, a year-long effort for governments, private industries, and non-governmental organizations worldwide to make actionable commitments that further the progress against antimicrobial resistance.
  • For the first time, CDC’s AR Investment Map highlights CDC’s activities in both the U.S. and abroad to combat AR with investments in laboratory and epidemiological expertise and public health innovation.

CDC is Taking Global Action to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AR or AMR) has been found in all regions of the world. Modern travel and movement of people, animals, and goods means AR can easily spread across borders and continents. Fighting this threat is a public health priority and requires a collaborative global approach across sectors to detect, prevent, and respond to these threats when they occur.

commit to action, deliver results, combat antibiotic resistance

AR is a complex challenge that involves dozens of pathogens across healthcare, food, and the community.  While the specifics of the AR threat faced by each country is unique, all countries need the ability to detect, prevent, and respond to outbreaks of AR pathogens to save lives. Internationally, CDC is leveraging lessons learned from its successful investments in the United States’ domestic infrastructure to detect and respond to AR. By partnering with experts and countries around the world, CDC is working to identify and pilot localized strategies to implement national action plans, enhance laboratory capacity, improve and infection prevention and control, and ensure antibiotics and antifungals are used appropriately when and how they are needed.

Because AR does not respect boundaries or borders, addressing these issues in one region or country can slow the spread of AR everywhere.

Given the importance of antibiotics and antifungals around the globe, everyone has a stake in protecting the efficacy of these important drugs now and for future generations. To accelerate the fight, the U.S. government took action by launching the Antimicrobial Resistance Challenge (AMR Challenge), a global call to action, uniting leaders across governments, private industry, and civil society to commit to action, deliver results, and combat AR together. Through the five areas of the AMR Challenge—tracking and data; infection prevention and control; antibiotic and antifungals use; environment and sanitation; and vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics—hundreds of partners around the world banded together to identify gaps, collaborate on solutions, and foster accountability for action. The AMR Challenge not only mobilized individual entities to address the issue, but it also successfully highlighted the value of partnerships in addressing one of the greatest public health threats of our time.

Join the Fight

Without aggressive action, AR will reverse our global progress in healthcare, food production, and life expectancy. We all have a role to play to slow the spread. Some examples of global organizations taking concrete actions to address AR through the AMR Challenge are:

  • ILÚM Health Solutions is bringing modern technology to healthcare settings domestically and, in partnership with the CDC, to low- and middle-income countries to improve the way patients are cared for.
  • McDonald’s is partnering with suppliers and producers on the responsible use of antibiotics in food animals in its supply chain, including a policy for chicken in the U.S. and markets around the world, and a newly launched antibiotic use policy for beef.
  • Max Healthcare, one of India’s leading providers of comprehensive healthcare services, is committing to containing and preventing the spread of infections by tracking infections via its AR surveillance system and sharing data nationally and then developing and implementing comprehensive policies on infection prevention and control.

With only one month until the AMR Challenge culminating side event at the 2019 United Nations General Assembly, you can take action and step up to combat AR.

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