The Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) have joined forces to deal with the considerable problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
According to the World Health Organization, antimicrobials - including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitics - are medicines used to prevent and treat infectious diseases in humans, animals and plants. AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines.
During an interview at Carpha Medical Microbiology Laboratory, Federation Park, Port of Spain, acting interim executive director of Carpha Dr Lisa Indar explained overuse and misuse of antibiotics in treatment in animal feed and in water for plants had an effect on microbial resistance.
'Antibiotics, as we know, are one of our best medicinal treatments. So if you have resistance to antibiotics, obviously that's going to impact your treatment.'
Indar said AMR was a key part of surveillance of global health, by further characterising a 'bug' or bacteria to best link a clinical infection to environmental, animal or other sources.
She said Carpha was mandated to improve health and well-being. It tailors intervention to the Caribbean - small, tourism-dependent countries with porous borders - where, if any disease was introduced, it would spread rapidly.
Currently, Carpha has limited lab and workforce capacity. An upgrade was necessary to improve its surveillance.
And so, the Fleming Fund UKHSA/Carpha project will be launched on January 14, in collaboration with the British High Commission.
Indar said previously, antimicrobial testing was done in an 'ad hoc' manner, but because it was increasingly important in global health, Carpha was revamping its AMR programme.
'With the launch of this programme, we're revamping our efforts, but more into an integrated One Health approach, looking at the surveillance, the lab, the prevention, the policies, capacity building, all these different areas so that we have an integrated AMR programme.
She said the One Health approach was about intersectoral collaboration - combining human, animal and environmental health, linking the clinical to the environment, as well as to food and water sources.
She said with Carpha's Environmental Health and Sustainable Development lab in St Lucia and the organisation networking with those in the veterinary field, it will begin drug-resistant testing and integrate all aspects to determine impacts and use it for proper disease surveillance and timely interventions.
'That said, we cannot operate in isolation. So we are working very closely with our partners, including the UKHSA. We are facilitated through different grants - the Pandemic Fund grant and the UK Fleming grant. And we're also working very closely with PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) that already is operating in our space in terms of strengthening AMR surveillance in the Caribbean.'
Dr SueMin Nathaniel, acting head of Laboratory Services at Carpha, said the organisa
