Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control-Online Journal

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AMR Action Plan: The Strategy for Japan

Norio OHMAGARI
Disease Control and Prevention Center, National Center for Global Health and Medicine

The issue of antimicrobial resistant bacteria is a globally significant problem. At the Annual Meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2011, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was featured as a major agenda topic. Since then, activities to recognize AMR as a global health crisis and to develop measures taken to combat this threat have been developed centered around the WHO. In May 2015, the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Action Plan on AMR, and urged all member states to develop relevant national action plans within two years. In response to this, in Japan, the National Action Plan on AMR was developed accordingly by the Ministerial Meeting in April 2016.
This Plan will drastically change the scope of measures taken to combat infectious diseases in the future. The framework for regional cooperation will be supported not only by an in-hospital network, but by a comprehensive regional network that involves the broad cooperation of the wider regional community. Within this framework, regional surveillance on infection control will be further improved, and will be utilized in the regional network. This will lead to further improvements in the quality of practices taken to contain infectious diseases.
On the medical front, the implementation of the Action Plan will bring significant changes to established standards for infection control in Japan. The systems and measures being developed for AMR include infection control measures not only in hospitals, but a variety of other medical settings as well, and they are being structured in a way that involves not only AMR, but a number of other issues related to infectious diseases overall. This will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the establishment of a better and more sustainable healthcare environment for the future. AMR control is deeply associated with the improvement of healthcare quality and medical safety issues, and as such, the sheer importance of the critical role that infection control experts play in this effort cannot be overemphasized.

Key words：antimicrobial resistance, AMR, AMR action plan

e-mail: nohmagari＠hosp.ncgm.go.jp

Received: September 9, 2018
Accepted: September 27, 2018

34 (1)：7─13,2019