Overview

At the Sixty-eight World Health Assembly in May 2015, the World Health Assembly endorsed a global action plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, the most urgent drug resistance trend.

Antimicrobial resistance is occurring everywhere in the world, compromising our ability to treat infectious diseases, as well as undermining many other advances in health and medicine. The goal of the draft global action plan is to ensure, for as long as possible, continuity of successful treatment and prevention of infectious diseases with effective and safe medicines that are quality-assured, used in a responsible way, and accessible to all who need them.

To achieve this goal, the global action plan sets out five strategic objectives:

• to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance;
• to strengthen knowledge through surveillance and research;
• to reduce the incidence of infection;
• to optimize the use of antimicrobial agents; and
• develop the economic case for sustainable investment that takes account of the needs of all countries, and increase investment in new medicines, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other interventions.