New WHO documents focus on tailored antimicrobial stewardship

The World Health Organization (WHO) this week release three new documents that aim to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through a behavioral insights approach.

The documents are based on the Tailoring Antimicrobial Resistance Programmes (TAP) approach, which aims to help stakeholders develop targeted stewardship interventions that are tailored toward the needs of specific groups (such as prescribers, pharmacists, patients, and veterinarians) and contexts (communities, pharmacies, and hospitals).

The TAP Quick Guide is a “how to” for rapid and practical application of the TAP approach, while the TAP Toolbox contains tools and templates for each stage of the approach. The TAP Process poster provides a visual description of the step-by-step approach to designing and implementing TAP interventions. A fourth document, the TAP Manual, will be published at the end of the year.

“These new tools offer practical actions and measures to stop the spread of AMR, which is essential to saving lives and ensuring the continued usefulness of antibiotics, and is part of being responsible and effective practitioners and consumers,” Nino Berdzuli, MD, MPH, director of the WHO’s Division of Country Health Programmes, said in a press release from the WHO Regional Office for Europe.

The WHO says TAP pilot projects are under way in several European region countries, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Hungary, North Macedonia, and Kazakhstan.
Jun 10 WHO/Europe press release

UK group reports decline in antibiotic use in pigs

A report yesterday from the UK Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) shows that antibiotic use by UK pig farmers declined last year, bringing the total reduction since 2015 to 62%.

Using data from the electronic Medicines book (eMb), which cover 95% of slaughter pigs in the United Kingdom, the report found that total antibiotic usage in pigs fell 5% from 2019 levels, from 110 milligrams (mg) per population correction unit (PCU) to 105 mg/PCU. The use of highest-priority critically important antibiotics saw a slight increase (from 0.04 mg/PCU to 0.052 mg/PCU), but overall it remains at very low levels. No use of colistin, a last-resort antibiotic for multidrug-resistant infections in humans, was reported in 2020.

ADHB officials say the decline brings the UK pig industry close to the target level of 99 mg/PCU, set in 2015.

“The sector has delivered sustained reductions since recording began via eMB in 2015,” AHDB Sector Strategy Director for Pork Angela Christison said in an AHDB press release. “This continued improvement, despite disruption to pig flow during the pandemic, is a credit to collaboration between producers, vets and the industry as a whole.”

The UK pig industry has set a goal of an additional 30% reduction by 2024.
Jun 10 AHDB press release
Jun 10 AHDB report