WCSCourses/AMR-Africa-24

# Antimicrobial Resistance in Bacterial Pathogens ## 9–14 March 2024, National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) - South Africa Wellcome Connecting Science Course Run Website Course Time Table ## Course Overview In collaboration with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), South Africa, we are pleased to announce the Antimicrobial Resistance of Bacterial Pathogens course. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health emergency, and threatens the safe delivery of modern medical care. A recent study estimated that there were 4.95 million deaths associated with AMR bacterial infections in 2019 with the majority of deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa (Murray et al, 2022). Global projections of the negative impact of AMR predict the loss of nearly 10 million lives per year, and a cumulative loss of global production up to 100 trillion US dollars by 2050. AMR requires immediate, concerted, international, collaborative action to monitor its prevalence and spread throughout the world. The importance of this has been recognised both by the United Nations, and by the World Health Organisation; the latter has published a list of priority pathogens and a global strategy for AMR surveillance. The challenges of controlling AMR in Africa are considerable for a number of reasons, including overuse and misuse of antibiotics, lack of antimicrobial policies or stewardship programmes, limitations in data infrastructure and information sharing on antimicrobial prescription, consumption. Workforce capacity challenges and resources are major factors impacting on quality of data and subsequent care. In addition, there is limited knowledge of pathogen strains and AMR gene carriage due to lack of consistent and comprehensive AMR surveillance, making it difficult to track transmission, evaluate risks, detect and control outbreaks in hospitals and communities. To develop capacity for effective control of AMR, multi-disciplinary approaches are ne …