138th WHO EB - Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance - Agenda item 8.5

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomed the Global Action Plan as an urgent first step towards addressing the multiple, systemic challenges that is the causes and consequences of antibiotic resistance. Currently MSF continues to witness first-hand the emergence of antibiotic resistance in our projects in a wide range of contexts such as child nutritional centres in Niger, our burn care units in Iraq and in adult trauma centres in Syria. MSF has documented the presence of very resistant bacteria, including ESBL, CRE and MRSA. In recent years we have started using polymyxin, which is considered to be the last line of antibiotics for multi-drug resistant gram negative infections. A tremendous gap remains, however, in our knowledge of the extent and burden of antibiotic resistance among our patients due to the lack of diagnostic tools adapted to the contexts where we work.