AMI holds roundtable to discuss UK's AMR 5-year National Action Plan

The UK’s current 5-year National Action Plan (NAP) on tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which runs from 2019 to 2024, is coming to an end. As such, the next 5-year NAP is currently under development, and progress made towards the UK’s commitments on AMR is being analysed. This analysis has involved the publication of an addendum to the current NAP, that sets out changes to the aforementioned action plan. These changes were required to make the commitments:

• More specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound
• Reflect lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic
• Reflect progress that has already been made against ambitions to reduce antibiotic prescribing in food-producing animals
• Work towards new sector targets

Applied Microbiology International (AMI) held a closed roundtable discussion in November 2022 to bring together industry, academic, science policy experts, and other stakeholders, to review these changes and provide a road map to compliment the addendum to ensure the delivery of the UK’s five-year action plan.

AMI selected specific recommendations for the discussion, based on three broad themes from the NAP; human health, animal health and collaboration & research (the latter of which included environmental health). Discussion points were formulated to help steer the conversation. A written output from the roundtable discussion will be published in AMI’s new Sustainable Microbiology journal this year.

Attendees included:

• Claire Anderson President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Jessica Blair Senior Lecturer. Institute of Microbiology and Infection.
• Sarah Chadwick AMR Programme Manager West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership NHS.
• Elaine Cloutman-Green Consultant Clinical Scientist (Infection Control Doctor) and Deputy Director of Infection Prevention and Control. Great Ormond Street Hospital.
• Michael Corley Head of Policy & Public Affairs. British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC).
• Nina Garrett R&D Director. Abingdon Health.
• Meenakshi Gautham Head of Economic, Social and Political Sciences at the AMR Centre, LSHTM.
• Kitty Healey Head of Antimicrobial Resistance, Veterinary Medicines Directorate | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Claire Hill UK Senior Account Executive. UgenTec.
• Catherine McLaughlin Chief Adviser (Animal Health & Welfare) at NFU (National Farmers' Union) and Chair of RUMA.
• Alan McNally Professor in Microbial Evolutionary Genomics and Institute Director in the Institute of Microbiology and Infection.
• David Pearce Professor of Environmental Microbiology. Northumbria University.
• Jonathan Pearce CEO Antibiotic Research UK.
• Adam Roberts Senior Lecturer. Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.