MAVIS Hub Edition 129

Defra Antimicrobial Resistance Co-ordination (DARC) Group: The group met virtually on 30 November 2023. There were presentations on the recently published One Health report and Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and AMR Report, an update on the Clinical Surveillance chapter for this year’s UK-VARSS report and overview of VMD’s international engagement strategy on AMR. The next meeting is scheduled to take place on 12 March 2024. Minutes from previous meetings are available on GOV.UK.
PATH-SAFE: VMD’s AMR surveillance pilots under the PATH-SAFE programme are ongoing and aim to help address key surveillance gaps. These include producing baseline data for AMR in ruminants which will strengthen the UK’s existing routine AMR surveillance in livestock species, delivered through the harmonised monitoring programme. Sampling has now concluded for surveys of AMR in bulk milk, livestock feed and healthy sheep and analysis of the results will continue until March 2024. There was a recent PATH-SAFE webinar detailing these AMR pilots, with a focus on the important industry-government collaborations involved. Recording is available on the PATH-SAFE website. The survey of AMR in healthy beef cattle is also ongoing. The PATH-SAFE programme will conclude on 31 March 2024.
National Biosurveillance Network: The AMR surveillance team is actively involved in the new National Biosurveillance Network (NBN) which has been funded by the Shared Outcomes Fund (SOF) to run pilot projects from April 2024 to April 2025. This is the second cross-government SOF programme in which the VMD is a key partner, following on from our involvement in PATH-SAFE. VMD are jointly responsible for Workstream 5 of the NBN, in which we aim to incentivise the sharing of AMR data held by private veterinary laboratories. This work builds on our existing Private Labs Initiative (PLI) collaboration with APHA.

3.3 International Engagement on AMR

The VMD and Department for Health and Social Care are stepping up preparations for the AMR High-Level meeting at the UN General Assembly in 2024. We are engaging with international partners with the aim of securing an ambitious set of evidence-based commitments in the published declaration. We have attended a number of multilateral meetings to support this including the Transatlantic Taskforce for AMR (TATFAR) in Luxembourg and the FAO-hosted AMR Multi-stakeholder partnership platform inaugural plenary meeting in Rome. Read more about VMD’s international engagement on the VMD blog.

3.4 FAO Reference Centre for AMR

The VMD continues to partner with the Fleming Fund to support capacity-building within countries to tackle antimicrobial resistance. VMD teams have facilitated online training courses for regulators in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, including on medicines residues surveillance programmes and assessing bioequivalence of veterinary medicinal products. In collaboration with academic institutions in Zambia, the VMD has established a programme of postgraduate posts to support research on antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial usage within animal health sectors.

3.5 Antibiotic Usage and Stewardship

As reported in UK-VARSS 2022 report, the UK saw reductions in antibiotic use in almost all sectors, including pig, turkey, gamebird, duck, laying hen and salmon sectors and stable usage in broilers. For the first time, Medicine Hub data relating to dairy, sheep and beef have been published in the UK- VARSS Report (dairy and sheep) and RUMA’s Targets Taskforce Report for dairy, sheep and beef.

3.6 World AMR Awareness Week 18 to 24 November 2023

During World AMR Awareness Week 2023 the VMD published a number of tweets, highlighting the UK’s AMR activity. These included a tweet about the CVO being appointed to the Steering Committee of the Quadripartite AMR Partnership Platform, and announced the VMD’s new postgraduate programme in partnership with University of Zambia, as well as putting a spotlight on the results of the recently published UK-VARSS 2022 report. VMD and APHA, went ‘blue for AMR’, with APHA and VMD buildings being lit up in blue, which was publicised through a regional press release and a series of VMD blogs.