Antimicrobial resistance in EAC prompts new action

Arusha. A Antimicrobial resistance has reached alarming levels in many parts of the world, including East Africa. This is according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System.

Due to the anomaly, a range of antibiotics are being ‘misused’ to treat bacterial infections, unaware of their reduced potency.

The drawback has been compounded by a lack of field laboratory diagnostic culture capabilities for disease control.

This emerged during a recently held regional meeting on communicable diseases in the East African Community (EAC).

Experts at the meeting of the EAC Regional Network of Public Health Reference Laboratories met to lay the groundwork for a renewed fight against health threats. They decried what they described as the misuse of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections without evidence-based antimicrobial resistance profiling of the pathogen.

The practice, they said, had become common because some health practitioners were not aware of pathogens’ resistance to the medicines.

WHO defines antimicrobial resistance as a process by which microbes change over time and no longer respond to medicines.

This makes infections harder to treat. It also increases the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death. Most worrying, according to experts, is the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, which currently kills at least 700,000 people a year globally.

It is feared the deaths will increase to 10 million by 2050, affecting mostly vulnerable populations in developing countries.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the rates of deaths due to antibiotic resistance are 24 per 100,000 people, compared to 13 in the developed world.

Antimicrobials, including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitics, are medicines used to prevent and treat infectious diseases in humans, animals and plants.

Antimicrobial Resistance Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines.

As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective, and infections become difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, disability and death.

The meeting discussed how to revolutionise health care in the region through the EAC health mobile laboratories project.

The Director of the National Reference Laboratory in the Burundi ministry of Health, Dr Marie-Noelle Uwineza, said the project would revolutionise health care delivery.

“The mobile labs project not only facilitates prompt and accurate diagnostics but also plays a pivotal role in strengthening the region’s overall health infrastructure,” she said. Leveraging the advancements in mobile laboratory technology will not only contribute to more effective disease surveillance but also early detection and, ultimately, the improvement of public health in the region.

They called for continued regional collaboration and the urgent need to integrate the mobile laboratories into the existing National Public Health Laboratories and the Health ministry structures.

The health experts also emphasised the need for the EAC partner states to share information on communicable diseases as the backbone of a joint project that was initiated seven years ago.

In November 2016, the EAC secretariat signed a three-year financing agreement with the German government through the German Development Bank (KfW) to support the establishment and operationalization of the EAC Regional Network of Public Health Reference Laboratories for Communicable Diseases (EAC-RNPHRL).

The purpose of the laboratory network is to strengthen the capacity of the partner states to detect and respond to pathogens of biosafety level 3 and 4 (Phase I).

On June 11, 2021, a three-year second phase of the project set to further strengthen the capacities of the EAC partner states to respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases, including bacterial diseases and cross-border epidemics, was launched.

In his remarks, Mr. Jonathan Kirabo, EAC Focal Person in the Rwandan ministry of EAC Affairs, noted that the project had provided solutions and tangible results in addressing disease outbreaks in the region.

The regional meeting held in Kigali in the middle of last month reviewed the progress made in the implementation of the pending activities in the project, which were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The project has nevertheless enabled the region to strengthen the capacity of the partner states to detect and respond to pathogens at Biosafety Levels 3 and 4.

For instance, the laboratories played a critical role in curbing the Ebola outbreak in Uganda in September 2022 and the Malburg outbreak in Tanzania in March this year.