UoN & KNH experts launch guidelines to fight antimicrobial resistance

Medical experts from the University of Nairobi (UoN) Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) and Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) launched guidelines aimed at fighting antimicrobial resistance.

The experts urged Kenyans to use anti-biotics appropriately to stop Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) in the country.

Antimicrobial Resistance is a fast spreading pandemic that threatens the wellbeing of humanity because of the inability to treat simple infections due to resistance from the cause bacteria.

University of Nairobi Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs Prof. Julius Ogeng'o commended the team that came up with the guidelines saying they were in line with the University’s core mandate.

"The research that we conduct as a university should translate into changing the lives of people," Prof. Ogeng’o said.

 The Director General, Ministry of Health Dr. Patrick Amoth congratulated the team for the big step ahead it took setting up guidelines to curb AMR.

In his speech, he acknowledged how much antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest challenges in medicine that threatens and jeopardizes humanity's wellbeing.
"We can't afford to lose the fight against antimicrobial resistance. We hold the power to shape the future of AMR," Dr. Amoth said.

Dr. Loice Ombajo, the Chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee at KNH, said the global crisis tends to reverse the progress the country has made in the field of medicine.

“Bacteria no longer respond to the commonly used antibiotics and as a country we may not be in a very good place, it is only that AMR has not received a lot of attention,” Dr. Ombajo said.

She says the main thing driving the resistance is the amount of antibiotics patients use.

“AMR is rising to a level where it is becoming a pandemic, it is causing many deaths. There is a recent study that estimated the mortality associated with AMR in 2019 at about 5 million people, this is even higher than the mortality rate of COVID 19 in one year,” Dr. Ombajo said.

The Guidelines on Antibiotics use for Surgical Prophylaxis give guidance on which type of antibiotics to use and when to use them for different types of surgeries while the Guidelines for Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy give guidance about the antibiotic use for different infections.

Below are the links to the guidelines.

Guidelines for Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy 2023 Edition

Guidelines on Antibiotics use for Surgical Prophylaxis, 2nd Edition 2023