ABSTRACT
The Gulf Cooperation Council Center for Infection Control [GCC-IC] has placed the emergence of antimicrobial resistance [AMR] on the top of its agenda for the past four years. The board members have developed the initial draft for the GCC strategic plan for combating AMR in 2014. The strategic plan stems from the WHO mandate to combat AMR at all levels. The need for engaging a large number of stakeholders has prompted the GCC-IC to engage a wider core of professionals in finalizing the plan. A multi-disciplinary group of more than 40 experts were then identified. And a workshop was conducted in Riyadh January 2015 and included, for the first time, representation of relevant ministries and agencies as well as international experts in the field. Participants worked over a period of two and a half days in different groups. International experts shared the global experiences and challenges in addressing human, food, animal, and environmental aspects of controlling AMR. Participants were then divided into 4 groups each to address the human, animal, microbiological and diagnostic, or the environmental aspect of AMR. At the end of the workshop, the strategic plan was revised and endorsed by all participants. The GCC-IC board members then approved it as the strategic plan for AMR. The document produced here is the first GCC strategic plan addressing AMR, which shall be adopted by GCC countries to develop country-based plans and related key performance indicators [KPIs]. It is now the role of each country to identify the body that will be accountable for implementing the plan at the country level
ABSTRACT
The World Alliance for Patient Safety is an evolving programme of the WHO, established to raise the profile of patient safety within the global health care agenda. The decision taken in 2004 to focus the effort and attention of the First Global Patient Safety Challenge on the problem of health care-associated infection [HAI] is testimony to the fact that HAI is a significant patient safety hazard and continues to harm patients in the 21st century. Much of this harm is avoidable through better application of measures which already exist including universal implementation of hand hygiene improvement methods. Action on hand hygiene improvement is therefore at the core of the First Challenge, and field testing of the WHO implementation strategies developed in conjunction with the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care [Advanced Draft] is on track to complete by the end of 2008. Following this, a revised and updated guideline and suite of implementation tools will be published by the WHO. It is important to note that the First Global Patient Safety Challenge has mobilized an unprecedented number of countries over a short timeframe to commit to take action on HAI