Global Health Security Agenda

Controlling the global hazard of antimicrobial resistance and supporting the Global Health Security Agenda rely on robust pharmaceutical systems worldwide. Meeting the challenges of controlling AMR requires not only scale up of successful strategies but also broader systems thinking and state-of-the-art expertise.

USAID MTaPS supports the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), whose purpose is to help build countries’ capacity to protect themselves from infectious disease threats and to raise global health security as a national and worldwide priority. The GHSA has 11 action packages, including one to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). MTaPS helps GHSA target countries advance USAID’s AMR action package-related objectives.

GHSA target countries face a number of challenges related to infection prevention and control (IPC) and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). In both the human and animal-related sectors, stakeholders have limited capacity for and political commitment to addressing IPC and AMS; in addition, low- and middle-income countries often face challenges due to weak regulations, standards, systems, and governance in these areas.

MTaPS’ GHSA/AMR work focuses on these two areas of IPC and AMS in human health, with the potential to work on animal health. MTaPS also collaborates with in-country stakeholders to help strengthen multisectoral (One Health) coordination for AMR containment. 

See MTaPS' GHSA work flyer 

MTaPS helps countries:

• Mobilize stakeholders and build coalitions around IPC and AMS activities
• Reform preservice and in-service curricula with a focus on One Health workforce core competencies
• Educate patients and the public through customized materials/messages and the media
• Build the capacity of journalists for informed reporting on IPC and AMS
• Promote community-based activities (e.g., through community health workers)
• Help develop national and hospital-level policies, guidelines, and standard operating procedures
• Build capacity through tools, job aids, supportive supervision, and continuous quality improvement methods
• Monitor country adherence to recommended policies, guidelines, and practices
• Generate support to group antibiotics into AWaRe (access, watch, and reserve) categories in national essential medicines lists following World Health Organization guidance

MTaPS works with 12 target countries to identify issues, players, and capacities and to prioritize and customize these activities to help them increase their IPC and AMS capacity based on the World Health Organization’s Joint External Evaluation criteria.

The MTaPS GHSA target countries are Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. MTaPS also supports AMR containment in other countries, including Bangladesh, Mozambique, and Rwanda, through field-supported funding.

MTaPS focus areas that broadly support AMR containment:

• Support for national action plans
• Multisectoral coalitions
• Public awareness of AMR
• Adaption of educational and implementation support tools
• Availability and use of antimicrobial-related data
• Support to drug and therapeutics committees
• Promoting continuous quality improvement methodologies
• Curricular revision to include AMR-related content

Related Resources

• Using Global Health Security Tools to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance (Webinar at 2021 GHTechX)
• Strengthening Multisectoral Coordination on Antimicrobial Resistance: a Landscape Analysis of Efforts in 11 Countries
• MTaPS Antimicrobial Awareness Week Campaign, November 18-24, 2020
• Global Health Security Agenda Mini-Guides

For more information, contact:

Technical lead for MTaPS GHSA/AMR activities

Mohan Joshi

[email protected]