This seems like a really good opportunity for some interesting and critically important microbial diversity work: Novel Approaches to Characterizing and Tracking the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance | Grand Challenges
This link is to a call for proposals from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Antimicrobial Resistance. Specifically they write:
We are soliciting innovative ideas for tools, technologies, models, analytics, surveillance platforms, and other approaches to generate evidence about the burden and impact of antimicrobial resistance and improve its translation into practice.
And that they are seeking proposals “that support the following”
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Accelerating the generation of robust evidence to characterize and track the epidemiologic and economic burden of AMR
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Understanding and describing the epidemiology of resistance and transmission of AMR
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Evaluating and prioritizing the impact of existing and novel interventions on resistance patterns
And they give a few examples of the kind of thing they are looking for:
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Innovative technology and surveillance platforms capable of accelerating the generation of robust evidence to document and track the burden of AMR. Specifically, we seek approaches that can provide detailed information about the extent (incidence, prevalence), distribution (across geographies, specific populations, and settings), and diversity (across pathogens and populations) of resistance.
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Methods to improve surveillance capacity and reporting of AMR beyond enhanced routine surveillance and targeted surveys (e.g. the application of genomics and machine learning).
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New approaches to analytic and/or epidemiologic modeling which accurately capture and quantify the contribution of AMR to global burden of disease, and the impact of resistant infections on health outcomes and costs.
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New metrics and analytic approaches (e.g. composite indexes) to describe and define the burden of AMR.
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Integrated approaches to understanding and describing the association between resistance patterns, anti-microbial use, access, and health and economic burden.
Seems like a great opportunity for people interested in an important area at the interface of microbiology, medicine, and the built environment …
I am Yahaya Muideen a Pharmacist, currently a youth corp. member in Nigeria with National Agency for Food & Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). My research focus is on the integration patterns, access and health and economic burden of microbial resistance. just a brief preamble on the topic:
Antimicrobial resistance has to be curtailed right from the Pharmaceutical manufacturing industries by the regulatory agencies through ensuring standard and efficacious drugs and related products are been produced for the general public for use. On the access to these drugs by the public, the government of the country should create a subsidized way to remedy the price and also create a distribution network from the manufacturers, wholesalers to the retailers and down to the patients who consumes these drugs.
The physicians prescribing this drugs should ensure on sensitivity culture to ascertain the causative organism before prescribing an appropriate antibiotics.
This am trying to elaborate on in my country of origin and will try to profer a solution through the government of my country.