World AMR Week: the Italian National Observatory on Antimicrobial Resistance raises the alarm

This World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week, the Italian National Observatory on Antimicrobial Resistance (ONsAR), for which ID-CARE Director Prof. Evelina Tacconelli is a member of the Technical-Scientific Committee, brings to light the lack of an organised strategy to combat the growing issue of AMR.

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. 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.

Earlier this week, members of ONsAR met in Rome to discuss this critical problem. Global, national, and regional updates on the trend of AMR and healthcare-associated infections were presented and discussed. Attendees noted the importance of appealing to politicians, managers, professionals, citizens, the media, and industry all together to combine interdisciplinary forces to combat AMR. They also highlighted the importance of breaking down inter-regional barriers across Italy; while many Northern regions are showing significant reductions and improved diagnostic capacity, Central and Southern Italy continues to record critical levels and uneven data coverage, which contributes to an underestimation of the true incidence of resistant infections.

The numbers confirm a highly critical situation, with Italy among the European countries with the highest levels of bacterial resistance. Globally, AMR causes 4.71 million associated deaths and 1.14 million directly attributed to resistant infections (2021). The WHO predicts that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance could become one of the leading causes of death worldwide, accounting for up to 10 million deaths per year. In Europe, approximately 670,000 infections and 33,000 deaths directly attributable to AMR are recorded each year. Of these, one-third of all deaths in the EU are Italian (approximately 11,000).

The day provided an opportunity for experts, decision-makers, and institutions to engage in dialogue, confirming that antimicrobial resistance is an urgent challenge that requires immediate, structured, and verifiable intervention.

The Italian National Observatory on Antimicrobial Resistance core objectives:

1. Constantly monitor the epidemiological trend of AMR in Italy

2. Initiate active policies at both national and regional levels with the aim of combating AMR, coordinating also with European and international institutions

3. Implement projects to raise awareness of AMR with the aim of improving antimicrobial use

Here at ID-CARE we are involved in multiple projects focussed on AMR, in particular the projects REVERSE and SAVE.  

REVERSE is a Horizon 2020 EU-Funded project for which the University of Verona is a partner and Work Package lead. The project develops and implements cost-effective strategies and tools for the prevention and clinical management of healthcare-associated infections due to multidrug-resistant organisms, aiming to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance in high-prevalence healthcare settings. Work Package 4, which the ID-CARE team leads, focusses on the development and organisation of the Antibiotic Stewardship Programme.  

SAVE, a project run by the University Hospital of Verona, aims to promote awareness and training of healthcare personnel regarding antibiotic prescriptions. In February 2023, the Firstline mobile App, developed through this project, was launched and made accessible to all the healthcare professional at the University Hospitals of Verona, following its two years of development, and successful pilot phase. The app, through guidance of appropriateness of various treatments, aims to reduce the use of antibiotics. During the pilot phase, the app was adopted within the COVID wards, the Paediatric area and in the two Emergency Departments of the hospitals.