ICMR To Expand Surveillance Activities To Address Growing Threat Of AMR

New Delhi, 11 Feb 2019: To address the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is getting ready to expand its surveillance activities to multiple levels of health care by including private nursing homes and district-level government hospitals. The country’s apex biomedical research body will soon set up a dedicated project management unit to scale up its AMR network, formulate interventions and create advocacy among stakeholders. 

AMR has serious implications for a country like India where the misuse of last-resort antibiotics for common health conditions is rampant. Considering the issue as a national priority, the research body is currently supporting surveillance, infection control and antimicrobial stewardship through a network of 20 tertiary care hospitals across the country.

“We are scouting for a project management consultant to scale up the programme and have invited Expression of Interest (EOI) from interested parties. We will implement the surveillance activity in at least two states to begin with and gradually expand it. The geographical locations and hospitals would be decided as the programme progresses,” Dr Kamini Walia, Senior Scientist at Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases Division of ICMR, told Pharmabiz. 

The initiative aims at widening the range of the council’s Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme to smaller in-patient centres in a phased manner. According to the EOI call document reviewed by Pharmabiz, the hospitals in ICMR network would adopt nursing homes and district hospitals in surrounding areas and provide them training. “It would be a mix of less than 100-bedded to 500-bedded hospitals using the hospital classification as defined by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals,” the document reads. An additional number of nursing homes and hospitals would be considered for stewardship training. The number of healthcare institutions in the network would be reviewed periodically on the basis of decisions taken by the project’s advisory committee. 

The new initiative to determine the country’s AMR status would be solely funded by pharmaceutical major Pfizer Limited as part of its corporate social responsibility allocations under an existing agreement with the ICMR. “While the funds come from Pfizer, the overall progress of work will be monitored by the project advisory committee. The selected consultant will work with this panel and prepare project brief for participating hospitals and ensure that all deadlines are met,” Walia added. 

Globally, infections caused by multi-drug resistant bacteria are a major cause of morbidity and mortality and have substantially increased healthcare costs. The situation in India is equally alarming. A study conducted in the intensive care units of 20 tertiary care hospitals in the country showed that 7 per cent of critically ill patients are resistant to antibiotics. Drug resistance to first-line antibiotics also results in 58,000 neonatal deaths each year. Pharmabiz