Antimicrobial Resistance - WHO consultation update

Antimicrobial resistance is resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial drug that was originally effective for treatment of infections caused by it.

In layman's terms, antomicrobial resistance can be described as "antibiotic resistance".

This occurs when bacteria change and become resistant to the antibiotics used to treat the infection they cause.

Yesterday (29th Feb 2016) the World Health Organization held a consultation on options for establishing a global development and stewardship framework to fight antimicrobial resistance. The consultation was held in response to operative paragraph 4(7) of World Health resolution WHA68.7 that endorsed the Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. The meeting was open to Member States, non-governmental organizations in official relations with WHO and intergovernmental organizations.

Senior Food Standards Officer Annamaria Bruno represented the Codex Secretariat at the meeting. "The consultation had a good participation and a lively and open discussion", she said "and participants had the opportunity to comment on various parts of the draft document."

WHO has now requested additional inputs from Members States, and international organisations including FAO, Codex and OIE, to be provided in the next two weeks so that a further draft can be prepared for presentation at the next session of the World Health Assembly in May 2016.

Links

Consult the 29 Feb. meeting documents on the WHO website.

Learn more about antomicrobial resistance from FAO.

Download Codex texts on foodborne AMR.