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Tackling AMR in Developing Countries
Developing countries often face a disproportionate burden from antimicrobial resistance. Fragmented systems, limited diagnostics, shortages of trained personnel, weak regulation, and insufficient financing can make AMR harder to prevent and control.
A National Action Plan helps bring structure, coordination, and long-term direction — connecting sectors, mobilizing resources, and turning commitment into action.
The Challenge in Resource-Constrained Settings
Many developing countries face overlapping constraints that complicate the response to AMR. These include weak laboratory systems, inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure, shortages of equipment and reagents, insufficient technical staff, and limited domestic financing.
Countries must also manage a difficult balance: reducing inappropriate antimicrobial use while still ensuring equitable access to essential medicines. In many settings, this tension plays out across human health, animal health, and agriculture simultaneously — making a coordinated, multisectoral response essential.
Without a structured framework, efforts to address AMR often remain fragmented, underfunded, and disconnected from national budget cycles and development priorities. A National Action Plan provides the foundation for overcoming these barriers.
How National Action Plans Help
A NAP provides a structured way to coordinate national action, set priorities, connect planning to financing, and reduce fragmentation across sectors and institutions. By bringing together ministries, agencies, and partners under a shared framework, it creates the conditions for sustained and effective AMR response.
Coordination
Establish steering committees and coordination mechanisms across sectors to align efforts and avoid duplication.
Capacity Building
Guide investment in laboratories, workforce development, and regulatory systems to strengthen the national response.
Surveillance
Support monitoring of antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial use across human, animal, and environmental health.
Phased Implementation
Help countries sequence priorities based on existing capacity and available resources, making implementation realistic and sustainable.
One Health Is Essential
AMR is shaped by what happens in human health, animal health, agriculture, food systems, and the environment. Resistance can emerge in one sector and spread rapidly to others — meaning that a response limited to human medicine alone is insufficient.
Effective NAPs therefore use a One Health approach to coordinate action across these sectors, ensuring that surveillance, stewardship, and regulation are aligned and mutually reinforcing.
- Multisectoral committees and technical working groups
- Integrated surveillance systems across human, animal, and environmental health
- Infection prevention and biosecurity measures
- Coordinated antimicrobial regulation and stewardship
- Joint education and awareness initiatives
Financing and Resource Mobilisation
Sustainable funding remains one of the biggest implementation barriers in developing countries. Many NAPs are not fully integrated into domestic budgets, which can leave countries dependent on external support that is often short-term and unpredictable.
A costed NAP helps identify funding gaps, strengthen the investment case, support advocacy with ministries of finance, and create a practical basis for discussion with international partners, donors, and global health funds. Countries with costed plans are better positioned to access financing and demonstrate the value of their AMR commitments.
Building for the Long Term
An AMR NAP is most effective when it supports long-term system strengthening rather than short-term outputs alone. This includes sustained investment in laboratories, surveillance systems, workforce training, regulatory reform, and durable coordination mechanisms that can outlast any single project or funding cycle.
Over time, these capacities improve resilience not only for AMR, but also for broader public health and development priorities — including pandemic preparedness, food safety, and health security. Countries that invest in this foundation are better equipped to respond to future health threats as well.
A National Action Plan Is More Than a Document
It is a practical roadmap for turning commitment into coordinated national action on antimicrobial resistance. Get in touch to find out how we can support your country in developing, costing, and implementing its NAP.