NDPHS commits to tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most worrying challenges to health faced by the countries in our region.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it is one of the top priorities for the Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being (NDPHS).
As such, it was a key topic addressed during the 11th Partnership Annual Conference (PAC) held at the ministerial level in Berlin, Germany, on 20 November 2015. The day before, a side-event on AMR was held, which gathered experts from the Northern Dimension area interested in discussing joint interventions to tackle this global threat, which kills approx. 25,000 people every year in the EU alone.
The PAC, which was attended by several ministers of health and social affairs as well as high-level officials from our region and beyond, recognised the serious challenges that AMR constitutes to our societies. With that in mind, it adopted the declaration “From strategies to action – how to tackle the challenges of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in the Northern Dimension area”.
On the picture: Participants gathered for the 11th Partnership Annual Conference in Berlin (Photo: BMG/Schinkel)
Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that addressing AMR requires multi-sectorial interventions, involving human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, the food industry and the environmental sector and committed itself to help facilitate the cooperation on the issue through joint international endeavours.
The NDPHS contributes to the latter with its “Northern Dimension Antibiotic Resistance Study (NoDARS)” project currently being implemented under the leadership of the NDPHS Secretariat. The project aims to provide health-care professionals, authorities and policy makers with comparable data that accurately reflect antibiotic resistance levels and the penetration of antibiotic resistance in the healthy population at the selected locations in Finland, Germany, Latvia, Norway Sweden, Poland and Russia. Through developing uniform surveillance methods, sharing information and knowledge, the NoDARS project will help to improve treatment recommendations for uncomplicated urinary tract infections and national antimicrobial resistance strategies.
Worth mentioning is also the fact that, besides the issue of AMR, in the period up to 2020 the NDPHS will continue working on issues such as HIV, TB and associated infections; non-communicable diseases and alcohol and substance abuse; occupational safety and health; prison health; and primary health care – i.e. the priorities being the cornerstones of, the new NDPHS Strategy 2020 and its Action Plan. To that effect, seven expert groups have recently been established.
To learn more about NDPHS and its work, please visit ourhomepage or contact the NDPHS Secretariat.
