Congratulations to NRH Doctors, Dr Alice Siuna Waneoroa, Dr Emire Meone Maefiti, and NRH Pharmacist Mrs. Samantha Totorea Diamana for successfully completing a two weeks long Antimicrobial Stewardship fellowship program at the Doherty Institute University of Melbourne, Australia last month.
The program aimed to further enhance and strengthen the capacity of participants to prevent and respond to antimicrobial resistance, through training in antimicrobial stewardship, microbiology, infectious diseases management, and infection prevention and control.
The three have been selected amongst other medical and health professionals around the Pacific Islands to undertake the program. The program is part of the Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT’s) COMBAT –AMR (Mitigating the threat of Antimicrobial Resistance in Pacific Countries) project.
AMR is the resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine or antibiotics such as amoxicillin, cloxacillin, flucloxacillin, metronidazole etc. to which it was previously sensitive. Some pathogens develop resistance to antibiotic medicines and are no longer effective if given to the patients. Practically this means, a certain antibiotics will on longer work to kill germs, bacteria and fungi due to patient developing AMR. A major cause for AMR is misuse or overuse of antibiotics.
On this note, the Ministry of Health is grateful for the continuous support by the Government and people of Australia towards the health sector and in this case, the Antimicrobial Stewardship fellowship program for its workers.
All three participants acknowledge the knowledge and skills gained from the stewardship program, which involves observation and practical training, including ward rounds, understanding of laboratory diagnostics, interpretation of results, and promotion of judicious use of antibiotics through the antimicrobial stewardship programs.
Mrs. Samantha Totorea Diamana highlighted that from the program it was evident that to accomplish Antimicrobial stewardship at the NRH, it requires teamwork, ownership of given task, continuous education and public awareness to health workers and the general public. “There also has to good communication skills, networking and professional relationship among prescribers, pharmacy staff, medical laboratory staff, and all health workers in all wards and departments.
Dr Alice and Dr Emire also echoed similar sentiments acknowledging the gains from the program as critical towards their capacity to respond to antimicrobial resistance especially with the optimal use of antibiotic agents, including drug choice, dosing, route and duration of administration to prevent AMR. “It has also broaden our understanding around microbiology, management of infectious diseases and Infection, Prevention and Control.
The three thanked DFAT, WHO and Doherty Institute University for the important opportunity and pledged to transfer the knowledge and skills acquired from the program to their fellow colleagues at the NRH and the provinces.
AMR is one of the pressing public health concerns with around 700,000 patients estimated to die each year from infections that do not respond to available antibiotics, . AMR affects children disproportionately; forty per cent of deaths globally are among children under 5 years of age and neonates.
An epidemic of multi-drug resistant typhoid has been sweeping across parts of Africa, being spread through water. Resistance to HIV/AIDS drugs is on the rise, extensively drug – resistant tuberculosis identified in 105 countries, and resistance to anti-malarial medicines is an urgent public health and spread of antibiotic resistance infections from live farm animals to meat and people documented. Furthermore, dangerous new genetic mechanisms for the spread of the resistance are emerging and spreading quickly throughout the world.
In Solomon Islands, these trends are undermining hard won achievements under our National Sectoral Strategic Plan particularly that of the National Health Strategic Plan including the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and the survival of mothers and children. If we fail to address this problem quickly and comprehensively, antimicrobial resistance will make providing high quality universal health coverage more difficult, if not impossible to achieve”
MHMS Press Release