Continuing the capacity building initiative of Indian Council of Medical Research on Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs, ICMR organized AMSP training; having more than 150 participants from various hospitals and medical colleges.

ICMR had organized four such workshops last year in which 150 health care staff from 32 medical colleges and hospitals were trained. Almost all the hospitals who participated in the workshop have initiated AMSP activities. The current workshop was held in partnership with Pfizer under the ICMR-Pfizer partnership on AMR in order to help in the expansion of the ongoing initiatives of ICMR in the areas of stewardship, surveillance and awareness on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) to other levels of health care.

As the world Antibiotic Awareness Week 2018 is observed every year in November, ICMR has released Antimicrobial Stewardship Guidelines, to mark the World Antibiotic Awareness Week with the aim to provide guidance to Indian hospitals to set up structure and process of Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (AMSP).

The audience for this document is hospital administrators and clinicians. With very few new antibiotics in the pipeline, it is important to use the existing drugs judiciously. Since inappropriate use of antibiotics is rampant in India, there is an urgent need to improve antibiotic use in hospitals, which can be achieved through implementation of good AMS Programs.

AMS Programs have been found helpful in improving the quality of patient care and safety through increasing the frequency of correct prescribing for therapy and prophylaxis, reducing treatment failures and increased infection cure rates as most of hospitals in India lack structure and process of AMSP.

Recognizing the importance to create AMSP structures in health care institutions in the country ICMR initiated AMSP activities by developing AMSP curriculum and conducting AMSP training workshops. The AMSP guidelines being released today provide guidance to administrators on setting up structure and processes of AMSP in their health care institutions, discusses essential elements of antimicrobial stewardship and diagnostic stewardship and provides information on tools that can be used to measure the progress.