MAVIS Hub Edition 131

The AMR National Action Plan (2024-2029) is now published. This action plan is co-owned by DHSC and Defra and sets out the UK’s comprehensive One Health approach to tackling AMR.

3.2 International Engagement

UNGA AMR High-Level Meeting 2024

VMD is working across and beyond government to achieve a strong global declaration on AMR at the AMR High-Level Meeting (HLM) at the UN General Assembly in September 2024. In May, the VMD supported an event held by the Royal Society and UK Government celebrating and galvanising global efforts to tackle AMR, attended by International ministers, civil society, industry and included a keynote speech from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. VMD have been supporting UK CVO’s role on the Steering Committee of the Quadripartite AMR Multistakeholder platform which represents national governments.

International Engagement

The VMD have been engaging internationally at a broad range of global events including an AMR conference hosted by the Belgian presidency, a Quadripartite Regional Benchmarking Workshop on AMR surveillance organised by FAO Regional Asia Pacific and the WOAH General Assembly where UK CVO and Swedish CVO hosted a AMR side event for over 30 CVOs with VMD’s support. VMD are delivering a postgraduate programme in partnership with the University of Zambia. This postgraduate programme in collaboration with Fleming Fund facilitates research on antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial use within the animal health industry.

3.3 Surveillance Activities

PATH-SAFE

We completed AMR projects within the Pathogenic Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and Environment (PATH-SAFE) Programme, led by FSA. These projects have generated representative data on bacterial prevalence and AMR for animal species outside our established harmonised monitoring programmes, working collaboratively with stakeholder organisations in the process. The results of these projects will be published in this year’s UK-VARSS report and in peer reviewed publications in due course.

National Biosurveillance Network (NBN)

VMD is leading a workstream within the NBN, alongside APHA and Defra. We aim to address barriers and identify incentives for sharing AMR data from private veterinary labs to government. This builds upon existing work conducted through the Private Laboratories Initiative (PLI).

3.4 Antibiotic Usage and Stakeholder Engagement

The antibiotic use, stewardship and stakeholder engagement team continue to work closely with a range of stakeholders to ensure that the AMR provisions of the updated Veterinary Medicines Regulations are clear and stakeholders understand the changes. We continue to work with industry to collect usage and sales data ahead of publishing the new UK-VARSS report later this year.

3.5 DARC

The Defra Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination (DARC) group held a meeting on 10 June 2024. The meeting included an update on recent findings from across the UK on AMR in bacteria of importance to animal and public health. The meeting focussed on understanding the potential animal and public health risks of raw pet food. Minutes from previous meetings are available on GOV.UK.