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APEIR Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Collaborative Research Program Annual Meeting

Thursday 23 October - Friday 24 October, 2014 Centara Duangtawan Hotel, Chiang Mai

The second Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Collaborative Research Program meeting was held in Chiang Mai at the Centara Duangtawan Hotel. The purpose of the meeting is to allow researchers to share their research progress over the past year, and to help transition the research program into its second phase- intervention implementation.

Dr. Somkiat Wattanasirichaigoon, Director of the Health Systems Research Institute (HSRI), gave the opening speech to the meeting. He welcomed participants, emphasized the importance of sharing knowledge and experience, and introduced Dr. Visanu Thammalikitkul from the Department of Medicine at Mahidol University and Dr. Les Sims from the Asia Pacific Veterinary Information Services.

The first part of the meeting was dedicated to project progress updates presented by each of the Country teams. These updates covered the results of the literature review into the AMR situation in each team’s country, the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) surveys that were administered to various stakeholders (farmers, pharmacists, veterinarians, clinicians, etc.), and the results of the stakeholder mapping.

Dr. Visanu Thamlikitkul from Siriraj Hospital of Mahidol University presented his research on the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in selected parts of Thailand, and gave an overview of the public health education campaign he and his researchers designed and implemented to tackle the problem.

Participants broke up into working groups to brainstorm ideas for interventions to be implemented as part of the program’s second phase. The most common interventions proposed during the breakout session were: 1) smarter use of antibiotics (through rigorous campaigns educating clinicians, veterinarians, farmers and patients how and why), 2) non-traditional methods of raising and caring for livestock, and 3) encouraging clinicians, veterinarians and pharmacists to adopt the guidelines and regulations already in place on antimicrobial use.

The last day of the meeting was dedicated to presentations by each of the research teams on the proposed interventions to be undertaken in each of their respective countries. In addition, potential obstacles to the success of intervention implementation were identified and discussed. These include the attitudes and preconceptions of the farmers towards efforts to decrease antibiotics use, the indicators that needed to be developed to measure the efficacy of the interventions, and the cost of the interventions themselves.

Despite these obstacles, the country teams agreed to share the results of their literature reviews and progress updates as well as other relevant project experiences. Moving forward, each research team was asked to draft a 2-3 page intervention proposal in order to help prepare them to enter the second phase of this three year project.